William Greenway, "How the Dead Bury the Dead"

This should have been the question
to Jesus, not why, all that philosophy,
but how, a little scientific curiosity.
Maybe it became a disciple joke. The answer?
With a pick and shovel? They'd giggle to themselves as they
straggled behind him. Or maybe the beginning of the knock
knock joke, most Biblical humor being
morbid, Martha saying of poor
Lazarus, "But, my Lord, by now he stinketh," and breaking
everyone up.

But nobody asked, or wrote it down. What difference could it make
then, so near eternal life? But in those Dead Sea caves
was neither handbook nor The Disciples' Big Book O' Jokes,
which is a tragedy. Think about the savings!
Or the quiet, kissless wakes because
no one has lips. Or tears. Or casket wood to choose.
And what else have they got to do? Bone idle, the British
say. And that was the way he said it, "Let the dead bury
the dead," as if they'd been waiting to, the real unemployed.

Perhaps it's a potion you pour, a dust sprinkled on the
graves that pulls them to the top
like Clearasil. Maybe just leaving
the bodies at the edges of graveyards at sundown,
or wrapped on the curbs like garbage bags
brings them like the tooth-fairies they were as apprentices.
From our beds we'll hear the clacking and sliding of knuckles
on the handles like more bones, and in the morning they'll be gone
beneath another anthill, and we'll be about
our business, their lives vanishing behind us
like dreams. And aren't there more
important things to do? After all, where were they going
in such an all-fired hurry they couldn't even take
the time to stick somebody in the ground?

Oh. And the answer? Almost anywhere. And as quickly as possible.




William Greenway