Henner's Wake Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

A wake can be a happy feast,
it honours lastly the deceased.
What he did not achieve in life
through constant work and frequent strife,
is heaped upon him now in praise
with drippings of straight mayonnaise.

They have assembled in full force
and food is plentiful, of course,
all those tuxedoes are expanding
like mallard ducks, all set for landing.
Some land, indeed on their protrusions
the clear result of large transfusions;
he would have liked it, what's his name(?)
to be among us, play a game
and stuff that caviar inside
a wake is, somehow... bona fide,
such happy faces, thoughts go deeper,
another victim of the Reaper
has taken one among their midst
one must be glad to say 'thou didst',
this time the knife took your close neighbour,
a man who always voted Labor,
some say he was a communist
a secret member on a list.
But, never mind, all the survivors,
are now united as connivers,
their eyes must wander through the room
to guess a target for the doom
that will befall, do mark my words,
the one or other of the nerds.
Meanwhile, the party's truly swinging
the priest is snookered, loudly singing,
the local doc who found it boring
stretched on the couch and slightly snoring...
At dawn, an icy wind sweeps through
a whisper urges, 'it is you',
It won't be long now, time does fly,
before you say your last good-bye.