(1900 - 1995)
Sorry, Mary, you never got the funeral you’d have wanted.
Sorry Mary, you never got the funeral you deserved.
There should have been bagpipes, step dancers, jigs and reels.
There should have been a fine over-long procession, and a parade
of sad speeches, one more grand than the next --
There should have been stoic salutes in bleary abundance.
A big handsome priest named Francis
Xavier with half-a-load on, full of pomp and bluster
should have presided. He should have marched
‘round all sides of your lavish box, Mary, swinging
his pendulous aromatic thurible as one might a purse.
Sorry, Mary, you didn't get the Mass of Christian Burial
you deserved. And about the rental priest, Mary,
who began the homily: “I didn't know Mary but --”
Sorry only the man you loved most with a passion
had to fight -- for the chance to march up to the altar
of the spare, cheap, Protestant-looking,
contemporary sanctuary, to offer up a few fond words, Mary,
in your honor. And you should know, Mary,
Himself had to cross
both his mother and the priest
to do it, Mary! The bishops still don’t go in
for laughter and poetry over the stiff.
("Save it for the pub" is their thinking.)
And you know how hard that is, Mary,
for an Irishman to cross his mother and a priest.
You would have liked Himself up there in a new white shirt,
making his mother fidget and the old priest squirm,
prompting everyone else in the sanctuary to laugh, and weep,
on account of that bloody blarney of his, Mary.
Sorry you didn’t get the send-off you would have wanted, Mary.
Sorry you didn’t get the funeral you deserved.
At least you got to wear that royal blue number one last time,
the one you wore the day Himself was married.
You looked so smart in it, and it was perfect
for the occasion. The wedding was grand,
but the marriage didn’t stick, Mary;
that’s hard when the groom’s queer. The cosmetician
didn’t do a great job on you Mary, for discreet in all else,
you were never so when it came to face paint.
Twas black brows and fire engine red to set off your ice
blue eyes. You would have flown into a bloody rage
over the lipstick! Scarlet not bloody pink, nor
salmon was for your mouth, Mary.
Though the water-colored decades of
those Spanish crystals winding Ave Marias and Pater
Nosters round your locked fingers were familiar
in a lovely way though the hands seemed someone else’s --
I will say this much for you, Mary -- you finally got a proper manicure.
The girl didn’t have to yell at you, that last time, to wait for final
coat to dry. You looked alright there in the box, Mary,
you vain, elfin New Yorker, though it's hard to look
your best, Mary, when the soul has taken leave
of your senses.
Sorry Mary, you got carried away
by six guys that came with the package.
Pall bearers for hire is how they do it now.
Sorry Mary, that your buckos Matt and Max and Scott
never got to haul your box down the church aisle.
But you would have liked the casket, Mary,
it was lovely and too ornate; upon it were all twelve apostles,
seated in a row, at a great table, getting drunk,
or so it’s easy to imagine, the bunch of them out
tying one on with Our Lord
on a Thursday night!
And forgive us, Mary, for burying you
from an unattractive church.
Saint John's was where you dutifully dropped
your weekly fiver in the shake-down basket,
where the priest was a thief but not wholly
without charm. At least his elegant tastes extended
to keeping the little Yorkville sanctuary well maintained
and full of fresh cut fragrance, a place where God
wouldn’t mind stopping and sitting
a spell on a hot day in the luminous climate-
controlled dark. 'Tis indeed a shame we buried
you from a church you never entered vertically, Mary.
Truth is, Mary, Saint Pat’s would have been
the proper spot for you. The Cardinal himself
should have been on hand to shake that baton
over your box, holy water springing forth from its head,
for, Mary, if you didn't deserve a resounding “Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death” psalm and dance amid in the tenebrous
resplendence of the cathedral,
I'll be damned if I know who might!
I'm sorry for the bland absence of song.
I'm sorry Mary, that more verse wasn't called out
into the November chill, as, leaning upon spades,
the Gate of Heaven diggers maintained a respectful
distance and your clan tossed carnations in a heap
atop the astro-turf blanket. Sorry, Mary, the poet went along
to be polite, maintaining a respectful distance,
for there ought to have been encomium and threnody galore!
There should have been elegiac couplets by the score!
And dirges, and laments and monody and what’s more -
the poet you so well loved should have roared
like a banshee of old: Cast a cold eye on life,
on death--Horseman, but before ye pass by,
have another. Just a wee drop, Horseman,
to keep you warm for the long trip home.
Slainte, Horseman.
Sorry, Mary, you didn’t get the funeral you’d have wanted.
Sorry, Mary you didn’t get the send-off you deserved.
O Mary, your funeral should have been great craick!
There should have had bagpipes and reels,
there should have been an Irish tenor, Mary,
to sing Ave Maria My Wild Irish Rose!’
Sorry we couldn't all go down to Finegan’s on the corner
of First Avenue, Mary where the skinflint Paddy who owned the joint,
that greenhorn who had the first nickel he ever made --
the one who saw you come in for dinner with your crew each week
for three decades running but never once bought a drink on the house --
not even on your 85th birthday.
I'm sorry that cheap donkey bastard he never bought you a drink, Mary,
because you spent a lot of money in that place,
and always left at 20% or more for the girl.
And Mary, I'm sorry no one got drunk at your wake,
not even those of us who're still allowed.
Maybe you should have died l0 years earlier,
when your number was still Re-4-8010,
before your daughters had declared war with one another,
a conflict between the states
of stubbornness and pettiness.
Maybe you should have died ten years earlier,
before so many of your buckos were compelled to convert,
from Catholicism to A.A.. Sorry, Mary,
no one got drunk at your wake.
You wouldn't have approved of that,
but men, these days, are better now,
they like to clean up and fly straight,
take care of their children
and stick around awhile --
Sorry, Mary, you never got the funeral you deserved.
But I’m not sorry you stuck around `till 95.
I’m glad I had the chance to straighten you out on a few of the changes:
No meat on Friday was out; and suicides were in --
by which I mean: suicides were not, as had long been
your fear, barred from heaven. What I mean to say is sometimes,
if the world had beaten a man down,
sometimes if a man wasn’t in his right mind --
In other words, newsflash, Mary:
They were now letting the suicides into heaven, Mary.
You protested when I told you so: “No. Go on!” --
your voice inflected with doubt but also with
the unmistakable rising pitch of optimistic incredulity
ascending with bright lyric force, inclining towards faith --
“If you don't believe me, Mary, ask the rummy priest who rounds.
The Cardinals changed the rules! A man who died
in a moment of weakness, by his own hand,
if he was truly sorry, Mary, can
now enter the Gate of Heaven --”
“Are you sure?”
I’m glad you lived long enough, to believe,
Mary, that your mate could indeed tip his cap, bidding
Peter a “ Top’a’th’mornin’ to ye!”
while passing through those Gates.
I’m a little sorry you didn’t make it to l00.
That would have been something, Mary, knowing
you’d beaten your sister Bridie to the century finish
might have made the victory double sweet,
but you were tired. But I’m glad you stuck around
long enough to learn that, sometimes, Mary,
even God has a change of heart.
Sorry you didn’t get the funeral you deserved, Mary,
but I’m not sorry you stuck around ‘till 95.
It was a terrific honor, Mary, to watch you fail
to crack, Mary as you were spirited
away from East 73rd, and stashed up in Franny’s.
What great craick it was to smuggle a wee dram
past the crocked security guard and to sit in your nursing home rocker,
to pull a laugh out of you by calling your portable commode
“the cocktail table,” while sipping and gabbing
about news and weather without the TV on.
I’m sorry you didn’t get the funeral you deserved, Mary.
I’m sorry your life was so full
of death, but I'm not sorry you stuck around
as long as you did, Mary, for it was an honor to sit with you as you died.
How lucky was I to have you just long enough,
to behold that wild dimming sprite in you,
the hard-boiled fairy,
so steadfast and alive
as it leapt soaring
out of you
and dove
down
into the tiny gut of my girl,
who is called Maria, Mary.
How sorry can I possibly be?
How can I be sorry you stuck --
How can I be sorry you stuck around
so long Mary, when I can glance across
my kitchen table, on any given night,
and watch my girl as she gnaws the wing
of a chicken, or catch her as she knits
her brow in that feral Black Irish way, and gasp,
as I bear witness, in disbelief, or belief --
it hardly matters which -- and laugh
as I exclaim in a whisper, “My God, my God,
will you look at her? It’s Mary!”