This shrouding quiet. Despite the funereal bell,
the distant indiscretion of a backyard cockerel,
the measured shuffle of feet, the rustle
of attire appropriately dark.
And the quaint village church gathering
us in supplication, our number small
and intimate, joined in mourning
the matriarch still binding the clan,
bridging a withering divide (we hope),
her withered body in a plain coffin.
Black and Brown skins crawl,
hearts hark back to when
privilege graced the front pews, dutiful
bondservants in the back, dispositions penitent,
remorseful of the ignominy of their estate.
But we gather now, ostensibly, to celebrate
her passing and an era that might
have bridged the divide between
the tributary bloods that streamed her veins.
And ours. So together here, in the sobriety
of the moment, quiet tears by some
soft reflections by a few, and by others
a bored disquiet—symptoms
of the disconnect from an era
of distant tales, the l’histoire of another time.
We file past her remains for the final time.
There’s a quickening of the pulse,
a thudding not explained by the benediction
of the bell, or the homily that seeks
to draw the clustered gathering closer
within the little church,
the cloistered reticence of its aging stones.
It is a pondering of the tortured path,
the travelled distance to the village
to this shoulder of hill. Sentiments uncertain still.
And so the poignancy of final rites.
Uneasy embraces, awkward partings
of estranged kin as evening thickens and
the relief, thank God, when they turn and leave.