Elegy on my way to buy milk

four men are carrying a coffin––
flowers brassed where the head, toes and ribs are––on their shoulders.

One of them is young. Three old,
One blonde, three bald.

The coffin is pine,
The coffin is so beautiful
It is as if he deserved to die.

Is he dressed in there––
Like the men carrying him?

a savage in a scratchy wool suit,
debutante for the maggots.
the coffin pining for the hearse.

A fifth man appears, suddenly,
another terse bald head.

He places a shoulder beneath the coffin,
And as if, waiting for a final push from the living,

the four men heave
and slide the corpse into his glittering carriage.

Then all step back,
tugged in the other direction by an invisible thread.

They pat their own shoulders,
forming a compact human circle
with a hole in it

where the deceased’s feet were,
and his head, and his arms.

They are removing the lint of his death from their suits.
And they go on patting, patting, patting,
Long after the carriage has gone.

Rashed Aqrabawi is the winner of the 2024 BOMB Poetry Prize. His chapbook, Christ, Mountain Road, is forthcoming from Blown Rose Press.