My Finally Blessed Team Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Pallbearers, pallbearers
Bring me on home, for my dream is done roaming:
Take me to the copper kettle, take me to the
Iron stove,
Flay off my bologna, wimple my holes:
Give my eyes the nickels to pay the ferry:
Don’t tell me who I might one day have married,
Just boil my sweets with cabbage,
And give the mutts my galled stones: For I am made now
To rest easy, my guts like moth-eaten clothes in
A wormy vanity;
The detritus of the magic trick of my being,
The lush garden revealed a cemetery; and even if
My aunt was Mary,
Give me to the earth and in my bed so bury:
For this is the existence I can better know:
Pallbearers, Pallbearers, do what you can, and what you
Must while all four of you are still dreaming:
While your bodies are moving to auction the strange gift
Of a lonely carpenter;
Look, the sky is unworried: the cars still move impassibly by:
The swans still trumpet, and the jaded women cry:
Not a single mother need know one blessed why
My body lays crippled, my functionings faltered:
The house is empty of windmills and goldfish:
Pallbearers, pallbearers, be you not my fathers,
But be you my grandsons sons and my grandsons,
And proceed me outside the stage of my worrisome dream:
Yes, pallbearers, pallbearers, bring me on home, and be you
My finally blessed team.