The Afterlife

I’ve lived within half a mile of it for twenty years. West by the black iron weather-hen half-strangled with clematis on the garage roof I can locate it. Past a low ridge in the cliff face of a limestone dale there’s a cave in the bushes. When the old tigers were long since gone, leaving their teeth, the valley people would climb there with the dead they thought most useful; push them well in, take them out again, walk them around: ‘They’re coming! They’re coming’ We Malagasies love our second burials. We hire a band that comes in a van. Again with liquefaction almost done we hold our cherished ones in our arms. From the grave-clothes they fall in gobbets as dog-food falls from the can. We wrap them in fresh dry linen. They bless our lives with their happiness. Walk them around the valley. Drop here a finger for the god that is a rat or a raven, here a metatarsal to set under the hearth for luck. And what was luck? The afterlife back then was fairly long: nothing demented like for ever, nothing military. The afterlife would come to the party.