My Altar is a table set upon a naked stage.
While waiting for the memorial to begin
I watch from the wings as students and alumni
In clots of twos and threes come shuffling in.

Poor Mary lived just nineteen years.
A dark depression did her in.
She was my student, I knew her well;
These tears I shed are genuine.

Ours is not an age of Faith;
Our thoughts and prayers are platitudes.
I look out  upon the faces of her friends
who’ve forgotten the beatitudes.

Her body rests in the cold hard ground,
interred two weeks ago today.
Some claim she is an angel now.
So I do hope but who can say?

What then can I say to salve these souls
who have forgotten  how to pray?
What cold comfort is my funereal black
on this bitter grey December day?

Her youth and beauty have been overthrown;
Persephone has been by Pluto wed.
How wise he was, the poet, who observed
The folly of being comforted.