Obituary Instructions
#17 of poetry
If anyone is watching me, and is concerned, don't be. Considering the kind of year 2020 was, I think this is understandable.
I'll try to get all the really bitter stuff at once, so it's over with as soon as possible.
Do not call me an angel, when I'm gone.
Mourn me, revere me--or not, as you choose--
But as the human person that I was.
An angel is a pure celestial thing
Too absolute and too ethereal
For earthly things like woe or weariness,
For home and hearth, for hunger, or for sex.
And thou shalt not imply that all of these
Were alien to me, to what I was.
To do so would set up a painted prop,
A graven image, false and hypocrite.
To point to it, to call it by my name
Would be to say, such purity was his
That if thou lack it, thou canst have no part
Of what he was, nor can he have of you.
An angel is a moral paragon.
Of such unalloyed goodness that no man
Could hope to be the like. I hope I have
Done good, on earth, but I have lived on earth
Most evil, and made choices on my way
With no foreknowledge where those paths might lead.
And thou shalt not craft of my memory
A movable goalpost, with which to say
Such innocence as his I cannot see
In these cold latter days, and none now live
Who do deserve the mercy or the help
That he deserved and yet was not vouchsafed...
And never mind who did vouchsafe him not.
An angel is all incorruptible.
As timeless, as eternal even as
The stars themselves are not.
It has no past, no future, only an
Eternal patient present, without end.
That you read these words now proves I was not.
That my days were both limited and brief
And shall not come again. The things I would
Have done in them are largely left undone,
And now they never shall be. Thou shalt not
Suppose away responsibility
By saying, oh, in some brave afterword
He may yet have the happiness and joy
That his one chance to taste in this passed by.
Those things that I will never, now, behold--
A welcome, Justice, Peace, the Northern Lights--
Are lost to me. And what now can I say,
But Father in Sunset, Forgive them not!
For they did know exactly what they did.
An angel is a thing beyond the ken
Of humankind. It needs, if needs it has,
We know not what and could not comprehend.
And nothing of the things that we must have--
And which it is injustice, of the kind
That crieth out for vengeance, to deny--
Does any angel need. I was not so.
I needed much the same as any man.
A home. A place beside the hearth. A bed.
Food, shelter, all the hierarchy's known
To anyone who needs likewise as much.
No doubt the lack of one or more is why
I am no longer with you, I would guess
Tis not the least mysterious. I lived.
I loved. I had a right to live. And thou
Shalt not pretend that's hard to understand.
And so then justify the next neglect,
The next rejection, the next needless death
That you will then call "Angel" to forget.
So call me not an angel, when I'm gone.
You owe an angel nothing. I, at least,
Am owed the truth of who and what I was.