Kaddish

– A day when there were services for a centenarian, a suicide and murdered children

Oh Brutus, should we mourn for the happy life or the sad one?
Is it the despair which lingers like miasmic mist
Or only the one wise thing the Delphic woman said?
And when the self-slaughterer lies by the unshriven child’s side are there dreams
in that sleep?

Should we ever mourn for the dead?
Or do we ever mourn for them
beyond us
in their perfect certainty
in their nirvana of ashes and earth?
Or do we mourn always for ourselves
The beat of the heart struck for each of us alone