Let no one wear black at my funeral.
\nI have not let blackness be the friend
\nTo me it could have been. The black storm
\nCrawling with demons clambered up the sky
\nEach day. My eyes shrank. I turned away
\nAnd the prince demon tore the roof off my house.<\/p>\n
I have passed through purple and grey to white.
\nI am as white now as the ship’s figurehead
\nThe sea spat out on the shore one day.
\nAll its paint licked off, it had a body
\nStill, better without gaudiness, a face
\nHinting at what was behind the colours.<\/p>\n
I have been compassionate at the lych-gate.
\nI have been made hateful by drowned sailors
\nBrought to me every one, some in good clothes
\nOthers piecemeal out of the murk of rock pools
\nWhere the biting and shaking sea at last left them.
\nLimbs, dispossessed hearts, all begging for burial.<\/p>\n
Those storms. ‘A corpse ashore, sir.’ The words
\nMake me cringe even as the gap narrows
\nBetween me and the men I every day sent
\nTo resurrection. All ended with me, and I
\nHave been alone. Even my loving wife cannot
\nWard off the blown leaves that presage storm.<\/p>\n
My fellow clerics care mostly about food.
\nThey eat pigs’ faces: cannibals, narcissists.
\nWith gluttony they disgust their own angels.
\nWhat can I call them? Some Latin name
\nWith a prim mouth and filth in the tail.
\nThey know enough for that. Pigs’ faeces might do.<\/p>\n
You see, I have rage still. At lifeboatmen
\nAt coroners I have raged, at those who stole
\nMy books, at the demons who chewed up my fields
\nForcing me to buy corn. I shall always
\nBe angry but perhaps with a white heat
\nThat seraphim will sociably glare back at.<\/p>\n
Farewell to the bad roads and the steep hills
\nAnd London remote. I shall never walk
\nOn the cliffs alone again. My last cats
\nWhose language I spoke fluently will outlive me.
\nPeace and defiance be with you all. What matters
\nIs not money or being feasted but soul safe.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n