The Role of Elegy

The role of elegy is To put a death mask on tragedy, A drape on the mirror. To bow to the cultural Debate over the aesthetization of sorrow, Of loss, of the unbearable Afterimage of the once material. To look for an imagined Consolidation of grief So we can all be finished Once and for all and genuinely shut up The cabinet of genuine particulars. Instead there’s the endless refrain One hears replayed repeatedly Through the just ajar door: Some terrible mistake has been made. What is elegy but the attempt To rebreathe life Into what the gone one once was Before he grew to enormity. Come on stage and be yourself, The elegist says to the dead. Show them Now—after the fact— What you were meant to be: The performer of a live song. A shoe. Now bow. What is left but this: The compulsion to tell. The transient distraction of ink on cloth One scrubbed and scrubbed But couldn’t make less. Not then, not soon. Each day, a new caption on the cartoon Ending that simply cannot be. One hears repeatedly, the role of elegy is.