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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MEXICAN FUNERAL PROCESSION, by BEULAH VICK BICKLEY
First Line: Four stalwart indians keep rhythmic step
Last Line: While birds trill melodies above the deep silence of the sleepers.
Subject(s): Funerals; Burials
First Line: Four stalwart indians keep rhythmic step
Last Line: While birds trill melodies above the deep silence of the sleepers.
Subject(s): Funerals; Burials
Four stalwart Indians keep rhythmic step.
On their strong shoulders they bear a frail casket.
Four tall men go before them.
They, too, keep rhythmic step.
They bear floral offerings, wreaths and sheaves of bloom.
The men mourners follow. They keep rhythmic step
While the tear-bottles of their hearts fill silently,
Ever so silently.
The women! Where are they?
She who bore the child?
They, too, who loved it?
Do they sit within a thatch-roofed, adobe hut?
Do they hear the echo of the hammer,
Metal tapping metal, metal tapping metal,
Metal tapping metal,
As when the braves fashioned the casket,
As when each tap mangled the mother's heart?
Rhythmically the procession moves on to a distant hillside beyond Victoria.
There, leaves sing lullabies
While birds trill melodies above the deep silence of the sleepers.
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THE FUNERAL SERMON by ANDREW HUDGINS
RETURN FROM DELHI by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN
THE SCATTERING OF EVAN JONES'S ASHES by GALWAY KINNELL
BROWNING'S FUNERAL by H. T. MACKENZIE BELL
FALLING ASLEEP OVER THE AENEID by ROBERT LOWELL
MY FATHER'S BODY by WILLIAM MATTHEWS