Grey Souls, Les Ames Graves, The Novel Unfolding Poem by Dennis Ryan

Saturday evening, January 7,2023 at 5: 50 p.m.

"I want something else to get me through this kind of
semi-charmed life... "
—Third Eye Blind, from "Semi-Charmed Life"

—this poem is dedicated to my sister Mary Ryan
and her husband Dr. Neil Poppendeck, and to their
money

It doesn't mean. It's all for effect, right?
Just as the novel's narrator mentions.
The older Destinant buys his wife's coffin
as the son, the future prosecutor, looks
down his long French nose on his mother,
her past life, a life now over, extinguishing
her; he has other worries—his pale walking stick,
his white collar starched, stiff and spotless,
his moustache well-oiled, the coffin extremely
expensive, the cabinetmaker working with rosewood
and mahogany for the first time, screwed-on
handles of solid gold for the pallbearers
to grip and grip and grip and then let go—
down down down into the darkness wherein
my friend is laid in another novel. "Tell me
when to weep", says the son, and, on cue,
the father replies, "Well, I don't know,
"You need decide." The son nods back.
It is all ceremony to both; nothing more;
there is no movement. And as I wrote
above, at the beginning, Philippe Claudel
had instructed his narrator to say, "It's all
for effect. It doesn't mean." No, no meaning.
(You got me, Heid?) . There's no meaning
in this life of wealth and privilege. No suffering.
C'est la vie. C'est la distance. Les distances.