AT THE CORPORATION COFFIN OF MRS. P. Poem by Menno Wigman

Asleep? Asleep. At over eighty-three,
and having combed her hair each year three hundred
and sixty-five times, and paced the town
on goodness knows how many pairs of shoes,
with time and again those laces, forks, spoons,
people, what people, where then, she's asleep.

Asleep and I, morbid as I am, think of
her comb, nail-scissors and her eyebrow pencil,
how her night lotion, bank card, juncture all
have been discarded, been erased. And this,
this shame-faced lugging is a funeral?
As if unnoticed you mislay a coin,

forget your paper on some weary station.
Call it tragedy, call it rhythm, time,
that filthy carnivor, ensures there is an end
that stinks. But now she is asleep, asleep.
So tuck her in and make sure that her weary feet
no more will ever tread the street.