Domanda

Joan Hambidge

For Margaret Rosabel Mezzabotta

Untimely, premature your exit
to an unknown region.
The soul, I remember this morning,
needs the slow maturation of wine.
If hastily uncorked or poured
wine suffers bottle shock.
You would have been able to verify
this for me: an obscure reference
to the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
But to comprehend your death
is an undecodable hieroglyphic
in a dark impassable alleyway.
Death reverses the order of words,
it makes us look back, remember, even
seize small moments of chance —
like my cleaning your glasses once,
discussing dark symbols with you.
For this funeral oration, or rather declamation —
as a poet I am completely unprepared,
no, undeclared, undeserving.
The so-called consolation or comfort
of a medium (Look, she sends you a rose)
or the flickering of a candle,
undoes nothing. What does “passing away”
mean? That you had to leave — in my book
anyway — far too rapidly
for heaven? That your soul was forced out
seemingly without warning. That roses fade,
candles cease to flicker ...
Still I wanted to ask:
“Who scratched out Nefertiti’s one eye
so that she was blinded on the other side?”

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