In Memoriam
© By Jean Bleakney
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In Memoriam
If it’s over, let it be over,
how can we forget? We should not forget
the years that were rank with abscissions;
the days when our unuttered shame
was as stagnant as the cut flowers
blackening under cellophane;
the autumn when streets and townlands shrank
to funeral gatherings—as tightly concentric
as the petals of chrysanthemums;
the hopeless sense of everything falling away
except the leaves, the reddening leaves.