A poem of mine entitled "A Funeral Day." Each line is five feet with an occasional variation to enhance the meaning and feel of the line.

The first part is pretty standard and clear-cut and rather unambiguous. The second part is a little obscure (though I used more obscure imagery for a very particular purpose) and has traces of Dylan Thomas influence. The poem is about the emotions of specific individual people-groups upon hearing the funeral bell; how the perception of death changes with maturity; and resurrection. No one has ever read this poem before and I am actually quite pleased with it. Hopefully it is half-decent.

A Funeral Day


I

A meager flock of ink-black birds flutter
And screech as they scatter in messy form
From the shady belfry that bellows such
Low hollow tolls and dismal drones that sound
Like the echoing moans raving
From the belly-depths of some blind dungeon.
The old steel bell’s deep and delayed murmur
Resounds within the white-washed-church: smiting
The sulky sighs and incessant sniffs of the
Black-veiled women who nimbly dab their red,
Wet eyes and softly swipe the salty streams
That slowly slink down their flushed cheeks with spring
Hued handkerchiefs cotton or silk; haunting
The delicate ears of young girls who with
Their pearly glass-doll hands
Clasp fast their mother’s reassuring sleeve
And curl into a fragile ball; goading
The adventurous minds of the young boys
Brave and restless who shift impatient in
Stiff-pews, their fleeting eyes searching in vain
For ghastly ghosts or flying pirate ships;
Forcing the lab’ring men to tightly clench
Their callous’d hands, to grit their pipe-stained teeth,
Attempting to suppress tempestual tears
That weep and wail within– and no sign of
Sorrow is seen ‘pon their stern, statuesque
Faces(but the eyelids beneath their burning eyes
Serve as secret wells for their secret tears).

The teens in dark pleasure imagine the blank
Embalmed visage of the still corpse eaten
And gnawed and chewed by gluttonous-plump-worms.
Behind a subtle smile they deem themselves immortal.


While all the elderly, senile and sane,
Subconsciously begin to select their most
Lavish and elegant attire– Sudd’nly
They’re brutally clubbed with the realization
Of their own impending breathless collapse!
In dire attempts they shun thoughts of
The dead’s decay, and failing to convince
Themselves they are not ripe for the coming
Harvest, recoil in dread and disbelief.

A greying man with few wrinkles looks down.
Sitting by him quite close, their hands woven,
His well-aged wife whose cheery, lengthy locks
Still gleam golden even without the sun.
And she appears distraught. Her whole throat burns,
Her stomach churns, her bright blue orbs, in fear,
Release sad saline drops that chill her blush’d,
Hot cheeks– as though a spring-day sky, bereft
Of cotton clouds that smiled light blue, sprinkled
The gay and grassy fields with rain, ruining
The fresh-faced-youths after school baseball game.
Without a word or glance the solemn spouses clench
Their thread fingers with hopes to bring comfort.
For in mutual fear they are struck sick
Reminded of their only son entrenched
In foreign depths of precarious war.

II

All those with life in this False Light were pierced
With breathing glimpse of Night so dreadful and deformed.
The bellowing bell calls with its hollow gloom:
“Cl‘OHHH’se the casket g‘OHHH’ kill the wake pr‘OHHH’ceed!”
Inside all bid farewell and pray the blind
Would see this light, stretch his stiff limbs, drain his chemical veins,
Open his mouth and say: “Behold!”—
— But “CLUNK” cries the coffin drowning all dreams
As trembling hands raise the dead– that black bed
Shivering cold consumed, descending down
Past the strange stares, down to rest warm under
The soil quilt, maimed by mud manacles,
Down in the dirt dungeon with no apparent key.

Though the children felt nothing they should fear:
They saw wood crate and black clothes treading to the green field.

The trembling hands plant this dead-man-seed back
In the dust (the seemingly sterile dust),
The destined dust that groans to chew decay.
This dormant seed that sleeps with blind bright hope
Awaiting the final blissful blossom,
The final Judgement Spring where he will bloom:
His argent stalk, ever-vernal, shall shoot
Through clouds and rise inside Luminous Night.
His grave displays his final breathless words
That he proclaimed gasping in fierce vigour:
“And Death Shall Have No Dominion!”