“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne...” – James Russel Lowell
We are all mourners now, our clothes funeral shrouds we tear off our backs when the time comes (and it will come); in one pocket we carry brushes for tidying the graves we stumble on in schools, churches, nightclubs, concerts, grocery stores, streetcorners, and in the other plastic flowers to brighten them up; our bodies are grown stiff with kneeling in prayer; we watch life bleed away all around us, screaming Out, damned spot! at no one in particular; we dream of Heaven and fear that Hell is murky, though in truth we believe in neither; we work so hard to build an estate which, at last, our children refuse.
And in a world where attention wanders without end we still pause, rapt, for a tearful moment, when the last rites are read, the dirges played; and lacking willpower, or time, or imagination to stop the killing, we become expert at lining up —so orderly, so civilized! —to pay our respects to the dead.
