Let’s burn a guitar
for the honor of those
who’ve died among us
and made us sing 
in their wake.

Let’s pretend
to reggae, let’s
assume the position
of blues;

though we’re lying sacks
of middle-class shit
when we do that
tonight
our dead friends have signed
the permission slip
for those journeys, so

under that whiter than white moon
let’s light a fire
and coax last songs out of
a broken, rackety-rick pawnshop axe,
singing

Sloop John B,
Statesboro Blues,
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?

then listening to the flames 
in the snapping strings
as the poor old thing
disappears in the smoke,

just as we will later disappear
into the dark
around a fading fire. 

It is impossible to say 
everything out loud today
in our accustomed way.

In the church we offer eulogy,
homily, the rites,
all the orations of grief;

but at the graveside behind the formal speech
we offer each other a butterfly language,
floating and whispering, unlipped and tongueless.

In that we tell of life and death
without a word, understand and
are understood without knowing how it happens.

Go home, we say to each other
in this formless tongue.  Go home 
and be at peace

in the day to day
now that we have laid him to rest;
he has no more need of us. Remember

how this began and ended
when you think of him, remember 
what lay between those gates — 

who he was, who we were
with him, who we are without him;
we keep it, and he’s beyond it.  Don’t rely

on the priests for an explanation;
we understand this
in our deep animal being.

It’s why we use the butterfly language
to speak of it and not
the rough pulse of speech.  It is older,

smarter, tighter,
better on the breath,
lighter in the ear.  It heals.