Cemetery Strike

The contract expires, and almost in unison
all the gravediggers in the city
switch off their bulldozers. In the crematoriums,
the oven attendants turn off the gas
then blow out the pilots.
Even the scatterers of ashes on the waters
check the weather, then slip away
to lie on the beach.

But death, that scab, pays no attention
to the pickets and goes on
about his predatory business
with the conscience of a robber baron.

The strike continues for months
and the corpses have to wait
in refrigerated warehouses
like supplicants in an unemployment line.
The old and young, diseased
and murdered, suicides and accidents,

so hungry for their little mouthful of earth
they don't even shiver, don't even notice
the cold. Until black spots of mourners
who can't finish their grief
begin to appear all over the city
like a rash on the streets.

Finally the unburied dead outnumber
the newborn. Out of sheer critical mass,
the almost silent mutter of their souls
(like thousands of gray rubbing butterflies)
pollinates the air and defeats the season.
That spring, even the living
yearn only for ashes and dust.

Art Beck