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The Mission, Kevin Young
Sep. 24th, 2009 06:46 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
moireach.livejournal.comThe Mission
Kevin Young
Back there then I lived
across the street from a home
for funerals -- afternoons
I'd look out the shades
& think of the graveyard
behind Emily Dickinson's house --
how death was no
concept, but soul
after soul she watched pour
into the cold
New England ground.
Maybe it was the sun
of the mission,
maybe just being
more young, but it was less
disquiet than comfort
days the street filled with cars
for a wake --
children played tag
out front, while the bodies
snuck in the back. The only hint
of death those clusters
of cars, lights low
as talk, idling dark
as the secondhand suits
that fathers, or sons
now orphans, had rescued
out of closets, praying
they still fit. Most did. Most
laughed despite
themselves, shook
hands & grew hungry
out of habit, evening
coming on, again --
( the home's clock, broke / like a bone )
Kevin Young
Back there then I lived
across the street from a home
for funerals -- afternoons
I'd look out the shades
& think of the graveyard
behind Emily Dickinson's house --
how death was no
concept, but soul
after soul she watched pour
into the cold
New England ground.
Maybe it was the sun
of the mission,
maybe just being
more young, but it was less
disquiet than comfort
days the street filled with cars
for a wake --
children played tag
out front, while the bodies
snuck in the back. The only hint
of death those clusters
of cars, lights low
as talk, idling dark
as the secondhand suits
that fathers, or sons
now orphans, had rescued
out of closets, praying
they still fit. Most did. Most
laughed despite
themselves, shook
hands & grew hungry
out of habit, evening
coming on, again --
( the home's clock, broke / like a bone )
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