Memorial Poem by David Cooke

In a windowless room they had laid you out
in a crisp white bed of linen.
Packed tight in a huddle around you,

we had entered to see you displayed.
Your body at rest like a saint's,
no awkward warmth or gruffness remained

to stir its monachal calm.
At one temple your hair had been shaved,
revealing the healers' scar. They had trimmed

the growth that darkened your lip
to an unaccustomed moustache.
A gathered clan we stood, each lost

in a separate silence
until the drone of a rosary began.
Like a long abandoned language

its monotone rose, familiar, to beat against
bare walls: a cycle of mysteries
that could explain or change nothing.