St. Gabriel's Church this morning <br />Bustles with a life <br />That Istanbul's Bazaar <br />Never saw on its proudest day <br />The wake's line wraps a whole block round <br />With poor men in their finest black <br />Indeed it seems that all the town's <br />Come out for one last fare-thee-well <br />She raised herself, the speakers say, <br />Her mother dead, her father drunk, <br />And when her husband early passed <br />She raised alone her bonnie lass <br />(And cared for her five children too) <br />How unbecoming is it now <br />That six unhappy men raise her <br />In obsequious procession <br />From the altar to the hearse? <br />Some forty cars lined end to end <br />To see her to her grave <br />Most of all I remember <br />A bystander who solemnly tipped his hat<br /><br />Matt Greenblatt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-irish-funeral/
