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Kenneth Slessor - Burying Friends
Work rating: Low

BURYING friends is not a pomp, 
 Not, indeed, Roman: 
 Lacking the monument, 
 Heroic stone; 
 Nor is it an obscuring parasol, 
 The pad of customary gloves and cries 
 And a black leather mourning-carriage 
 Hung between death and the beholder`s eyes. 
 This little bin of cancelled flesh 
 Strode the earth once, 
 Rubbed against men— 
 But that`s all done. 
 A gentle elegy, a tear or two, 
 May charm the grave-diggers, no doubt, 
 But nothing can count to these incongrous ruins. 
 Their commercial value is not worth speaking about. 
 Only it seems not a burial 
 Of irrelevant sods, 
 But a lopped member 
 From this my body; 
 Almost, in fact, a tiny amputation, 
 A paring of biography, thrown in there. 
 And he has thieved his own life away 
 And something from mine. Farewell, thou pilferer!
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