Do not stand there in your fine-spun suit
of black platitude and tell me how you cared
for her and expect gratitude, that you arrived
out of respect, to deliver this message:
“There’s a new star in the sky tonight.”
Do you not know (NO!) how many die each year?
One hundred and fifty thousand novas do not
shine nightly, turning darkness into light,
and if they did, what life
has been shovelled into the furnace.

Do not enjoin me with how dear a friend
she was, the one you sent a birthday card to only if
it fitted into your electronic calendar.
Don’t bring your back-of-the-envelope theology
to the front and exclaim that your God of Love
“needed another angel”, so he ripped a child
from her mother’s arms, stripped her
from her father’s embrace.

Do not tell me how you will miss her, then
wander away dismissive, not coming
to sit with us in our desolation and distress.
Does it discomfort you to sit in silence
while we cry? Are you so downcast that you
can not stay until our tears are too exhausted
to flow …
for now? How painful
it must be to live
with a burden
so tiresome.


                                 25 May 2024