This poem from the Meanjin archives was first published in 1989.
There was a cold wind that threatened to level everything
but the grey-brick crematorium, squat lone space station
in an alien plain of paths and small monuments.
Inside, almost comical in its tastelessness,
organ music, pre-recorded, piped somewhere
like the warm air, mechanical fountains,
sliding doors, two-dimensional,
a 1960s ‘Thunderbirds’ vision of the future.
Some, it seems, find technology a buffer,
and all this was easier to bear than the coffin,
which looked too little set so prominently above it all,
so utilitarian too, this most functional object,
distant horizontal cousin to the wardrobe,
no gold trimmings can hide the face of box.
‘Strange to think of her in there,’ said someone,
but without any hidden meaning about souls or anything.
I didn’t think she was, somehow.
We all watched curiously, as the box was lowered
into some emptiness beneath.
Outside, the cars headed for her empty unit,
the saddest part, this crowd of strangers
in her too small room, and her always so private.
I ate nothing but pikelets;
cold, greasy, moist,
they slid down my throat like dough-fat oysters.
In her bedroom her six pairs of shoes
were lined up in plastic bags where she’d left them.
On the way back to my car
the wind tore tears from me like scars.
Meanjin Volume 48 Issue 2 1989
The full Meanjin archive can be accessed at www.informit.com.au/meanjinbackfiles
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