Time Capsule: Funeral of the Innocent

Robert Gibbons

Funeral of the Innocent

Trying my damndest to get as far away from it as I can, but can’t. No, I don’t want to revisit it, the death of the innocent. But someone asked for words from here, while adding at the same Time, “There are no words…” to which I would agree. Don’t let these be words, then, but drumbeats, caisson wagon wheels, imperfectly circular, rumbling on cobbled ground. In the background listen to Reverend Gary Davis moan, Death don’t have no mercy     in this land. Even my own old man knew better, saying, (when in my teens I shelled out all of twenty-five dollars for an oil painting at a Cambridge thrift shop titled, Funeral of the Innocent, eight primitive hands holding a totally shrouded figure toward the sky), that he could think of no worse subject. Eventually, threw the work away. There’ll be no ten-gun salute. Death will go in any family    in this land. I’m lost, where is Newtown, Connecticut? Pass through it on the way to New Haven or Manhattan? The job of mourning pays black wages. Could not fathom depths of those who experience no worse subject. Again, & again they must return to toil. Death never takes a vacation    in this land. It’s dirty work. Mourning. Heft that weight. Strong that back. Primitive those hands. Unarmed that heart. Nothing but Time. After Time…