from Verse and Adverse: "Dirge of the Dead Letters" ©

 

What does it profit a man

or a woman,

her fingers five kinds of literate madness

moving in a slow handful of purposeful sorrow

shaking out the facts of decease

like rheumatoid snakes

or

her hand cutting with blue-ink ballpoint

as indelible for me

as a chisel on a gravestone:

“Karl died last April.”

What does it profit, huh?

 

—her hands that in an ancient passion once

were lithe snakes full of touch.

Here I am in a non-profit outfit,

disemboweling with a brass-plated letter opener

return envelopes

containing cards

with check-off boxes

we sent out to members:

$10 $20 $50 donation

or

Remove My Name from the Mailing List

and piling the checks

on a fake-woodgrain, pressed-wood desk.

I’ll pour their little souls’ good intentions

into a data-processing spreadsheet.

 

And sometimes there’s a hand-written message.

“Take Louis off your mailing list.

He died in June.”

Is Louis less a member now?

What does it profit a man

or a woman

to live?

​

“Mary passed away. You do good work.”

 

All the curves of the letters are gone,

replaced by the acute edges of palsied calligraphy.

The hand has disremembered

its grade-school exercises of

rows of circles on lined paper

to practice curves.

Only the up-and-down cuneiform jaggies

are now inherent in the blue-ink ballpoint.

​

I suppose the memory of gracious curves

was left that Wednesday evening

in the Episcopalian oak pew when

Karl Mary Louis

was remembered

by the race of pallbearers who

survive temporarily.

 

The hand on this card has

taken up with Druid runic scribes!

Occult masters who

teach her snakes to be cryptic.

I suppose

that’s what I most appreciate, the

cryptic intelligence and

blue-ink ballpoint memories

of the aged survivors who

take on that oldest profession,

mourning and pallbearing.

What does it profit a man

or a woman

to live

except to remember?

 

Either this surviving hand is very old or

the pen is lopsided or erratic.

“Deceased. Please delete from mailing list,”

Norma writes in blue-ink ballpoint

on the solicitation return card our

non-profit mailed out.

I’m thinking about what it

does or doesn’t

profit a man

or a woman.

 

Here’s a tear for Mary who

mourns Honey

deceased at 87.

“He died last April. He was 87. Please

remove his name from your mailing list.”

What does it profit a man

or a woman

to live

except to remember

and share that memory

with the race of good pallbearers?

 

I place the card with grim sententia by

shaky hand written, the sure, sad hand,

in a separate place,

a little graveyard on my desk

with neat rows of the rank-and-file dead

with white-paper solicitation return tombstones

with blue-ink chiseled epitaphs:

“Please remove

Bill’s name from your mailing list. My beloved died

last spring. I am Ruth, his wife.”

 

And who will write Ruth’s sorrow except Ruth?

Who other than Ruth can write that particular sorrow?

Perception: sensation accompanied by memory.

“I am moving to a rest home

near my daughter in Ohio. Mr. Bartleby died

last year.

Please remove his name from your list.

Remove my name, too.”