August Notebook: A Death
1. River Bicycle Peony
I woke up thinking abouy my brothr’s body.
That q That was my first bit of early morning typing
So the first dignity, it turns out, is to get the spelling right.
I woke up thinking about my brother’s body.
Apparently it’s at the medical examiner’s morgue.
I found myself wondering whether he was naked
Yet and whose job it was to take clothes off
And when they did it. It seemed unnecessary
To undress his body until they performed the exam
And that is going to happen later this morning
And so I found myself hoping that he was dressed
Still, though smell may be an issue, or hygiene.
When the police do a forced entry for the purpose
Of a welfare check and the deceased person is alone,
The body goes to the medical examiner’s morgue
In the section for those deaths in which no evidence
Of foul play is involved so the examination
For cause of death is fairly routine. Two policemen,
For some reason I imagine they were young,
Found my brother. His body was in the bed
Which was a mattress on the floor. He was lying
On his back, according to Angela, my brother’s friend,
Who lives in the building and is schizophrenic
And always introduced herself as my brother’s
Personal assistant, and he seemed peaceful.
There would have been nothing in the room
But the mattress and a microwave, an ashtray,
I suppose, cartons and food wrappers he hadn’t
Thrown away and the little plastic prescription
Bottles that he referred to as his scrips.
They must have called the ambulance
And that was probably a team of three.
When I woke, I visualized this narrative
And thought it would be shorter. I thought
That what would represent my feelings
Would be the absence of metaphor.
But then, at the third line, I discovered
The three-line stanza and that it was
Going to be the second dignity. So
I imagine he is in one of those aluminium
Cubicles I’ve seen in the movies,
Dressed or not. I also imagine that,
If they undressed him, and perhaps washed
His body or gave it an alcohol rub
To disinfect it, that that was the job
Of some emigrant from a hot, poor country.
Anyway, he is dressed in this stanza,
Which mimics the terza rima of
Dante’s comedy
And is a form that Wallace Stevens liked
To use, and also my dear friend Robert.
And “seemed peaceful” is a kind of metaphor.
2. Sudden and Grateful Memory of
Mississippi John Hurt Because I woke again thinking of my brother’s body
And why anyone would care in some future
That poetry addresses how a body is transferred
From the medical examiner’s office,
Which is organized by local government
And issues a certificate certifying that the person
In question is in fact dead and names the cause
Or causes, to the mortuary or cremation society,
Most of which are privately owned businesses
And run for profit and until recently tended
To be family businesses with skills and decorums
Passed from father to son, and often quite ethnically
Specific, in a country like ours made from crossers
Of borders, as if, in the intimacy of death,
Some tribal shame or squeamishness or sense
Of decorum asserted itself so that the Irish
Buried the Irish and the Italians the Italians.
In the South in the early years of the last century
It was the one business in which a black person
Could grow wealthy and pass on a trade
And a modicum of independence to his children.
I know this because Earlene wrote a paper about it
In school and interviewed fourth-generation
African American morticians in Oakland
Whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers
Had buried the dead in cotton towns on the Delta
Or along the Brazos River in Texas, passing on
To their children who had gone west an order
Of doing things and symbolic forms of courtesy
For the bereaved and sequences of behavior
At wakes and funerals, so that, for example,
The eldest woman in the maternal line
Entered the chapel first, and what prayers
Were said in what order. During Prohibition
They even sold the white lightning to the men
Who were allowed to slip outside and take a nip
And talk about the dead while the cries
And gospel-song-voiced contralto moans
Of grief that could sound like curious elation
Rose inside. Also the rules for burial or burning.
Griefs and rituals and inside them cosmologies.
And I thought gratefully of Mississippi John Hurt’s
Great song about Louis Collins and its terrible
Tenderness which can’t be reproduced here
Because so much of it is in the picking
Of the twelve-string guitar and in his sweet,
Reedy old man’s voice:
When they heard
That Louis was dead,
All the people dressed in red.
The angels laid him away.
They laid him six feet under the clay.
The angels laid him away.
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