From an Interview with an Undertaker in the Not-Too-distant Future
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FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH AN UNDERTAKER IN THE NOT-TOO-DISTANT FUTURE
As someone who's intolerantOf change, I see my livelihoodAs verging on the heaven-sent.
To tell you that the job involvesA daily round that's routinizedWould be to state a fact by halves.
One drains and fills and dresses. (ThrowsSome stitching in if something's gaping.)What goes for method also goes
For material. Cadavers differOnly superficially:Among your stiffs, none's any stiffer.
Yet it's an error I was makingIn thinking that a change could neverOvertake this undertaking.
The start of it was hard to see—The normal trickle of tattoosWas growing only gradually—
Whereas the veritable tideThis trickle since has swollen to—You couldn't miss it if you tried.
And yes, this wave that's carried allBefore it has bestirred the tradeTo a little shift in protocol: [End Page 110]
The art with which the gone are gracedThese days has led to showing themUnclothed (if but above the waist).
Amazing suasion, fashion is.In spite of which no flesh of mineIs sporting any images.
And not (at least not just) becauseIt's colorless you'd color me.Though hardly one to court applause
For balking when they bark "Conform!"I wouldn't mind some credit forA tendency to buck the norm …
Is that the bell again? If so,It's probably a customerAnd time for me to let you go. [End Page 111]
DANIEL BROWN's poetry collections are Taking the Occasion (winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize), What More?, and (in manuscript) Poems with Subjects. His Why Bach?: An Audio-Visual Appreciation won the Best Fine Arts Book Award from Digital Book World, and is available at Amazon.
