The Burial

Two days ago
I helped to slide a box
That held
The shell
Of a woman
Who was my grandmother
Into a cement room
The box coming to a gritty halt
At an angle which left me unfulfilled
On top of another vaulted dwelling
That houses my grandfather's shell
Next to yet another where my favorite auntie

A Saint
Is laid.

And there they will stay

Until the winds
And storms
Of a future time
Scatter the dust of their remains
Into a a new world which I cannot conceive.

Two days ago

I
Along with Seven other Men
Navigated two precarious wooden planks
As we crossed the trench
And landed on a small patch of mud and grass and Ashes

And Old

Carrying a beautiful brown Wooden box
Which held within its finite walls
A beautiful Brown Lady
Who looked vaguely familiar
Yet Nothing like I had imagined.

And the women

Her daughters
Sang hymns
As a stranger
Poured water
And mixed
More Cement
Piecing together
A jigsaw puzzle
Of stone
And mud
The wall
The gate
Growing in size
Until it reached the top

More water

More hymns
Bodies shifting
High heels magically remaining upright
In the uneven Earth
In the old.

Two days ago

As the dusk landed on our heads
And in our hearts
We celebrated the end of an era
As a stranger smoothed the last of the wet cement
With indifference
And my cousin carved the brown lady's  beginning and end
With lines that slanted
The woman who gave me warm bread

Every day

Was finally laid to rest
Leaving us
Her family
Her tribe
Here
To Carry on