"one of us has died"

In memoriam: Gandolph St. Clair, 1951-2018

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     one of us has died—
stilt-walkers, drummers and trumpeter on the big truck
straggling mourners hiding

their distractions in crowding
embraces of old friends
coming off sidewalks

to join the funereal shuffling
of heels past harbour-front Government offices,

flag-draped City Hall, wooden Presbytery,
to file behind the varnished casket—lonely,
singular, its weight of grieving

on the aching palms of his abandoned
companions. In the Cathedral,
self-serving eulogies will go on

too long, he is beginning to fade
away like the disintegrating holy frescoes

on which we gaze blankly. The plots of remembrance
thin, not thicken: last conversations were about what?
old quarrels were when? and in what year did we go to France,

read in Toronto, smoke in Kingston? and who thought
he should have whatever or whenever?—
until a child’s sobbing hits hard-fought

love, and we collapse beyond ourselves
behind the final leaflet-summary of our loss.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     one of us has died—
and at the seaside cemetery
his friend the priest sprinkles holy rituals for the dead

grave-men manoeuvre the box into the family tomb
a scarved woman in shades carefully pours a palmful of petals
his mother prays till every slab is laid, the drummers

chant Legba to open the gates before the lone trumpet
before our death that one of us has died.