Eh, la misère.
To survive in the vale of the
Shadow of death
Was to develop a thickened hide
A calloused soul,
An armored heart
That could not be overthrown
By a month’s isolation in winter,
A spouse’s sudden abandonment,
A child succumbing to typhus,
A crop destroyed by
Hail or rot or insect mandible.
And yet even the most flinty of hearts
Has its needs
For tenderness, succor,
The release of implacable pressures
That yearn for even a moment’s easing
Lest madness result.
In former times, the hardness
of life —
Continual bundling against bitter cold,
Scratching for daily sustenance,
Battling relentless enemies,
Raising the heedless and insatiable young —
Did not allow the privilege
Of falling apart,
Dismissing our guards,
Unmanning the parapets.
Mere death, though a hardship,
Might not cut through
The scabrous pelt that inured
Against day-to-day suffering.
And so, loved ones might pass
Unmourned and unwept for,
The roiling magma of grief having no
Vent to leech off its incessant throbbing.
Enter les pleureuses.
After death,
The preparation of the body,
The obsequies and the blessings,
The waving of golden crosses and
Sprinkling with holy droplets,
Perfuming with sweet, choking incense,
The casket was carried to the church yard
For burial.
Then, les pleuerueses,
gentle-hearted women
Clad in black and funereal crepe
Who could weep on command
Stepped up to the graveside
As mother or husband or stillborn child
was lowered into the hole.
The unholy wailing they
Let loose shook the ground
And the heavens too.
As if their own kin were descending
into the realm of beetle and worm,
never to grace a table or cradle again.
They howled, they caterwauled, they threw
Their arms to the skies, beat their bony chests
And poured out a lamentation
Bleaker than Jeremiah mourning the ruin of Jerusalem.
They keened, they wept and cried aloud.
They called out the name of the deceased
again and again and again,
bent over with tears and groaning.
And soon, the hardship-hardened peasants
standing around the new-dug grave
Also bawled, gushing from eyes and noses,
Faces puffy and drowned with grief,
Their heads pounding with the
Tom-toming of sorrow that
Might make corpses of them all.
The casket lowered, the loose gray dirt
Now mounded over the hole,
The flock of pleureuses departed
as family and friends wandered away toward
The collation meal —
breads and ragouts and
yellow, creamed black coffee so sugared
It might raise the dead.
But the dam had broken,
And the exhausted mourners
Felt their grief headaches dissipate
As did their worry about not being able to cry.
Then, whiskey supplied the blessing dew
And pipe-smoke the enlivening incense as
Holy laughter and sacred gossip
Filled the house of the dead —
The first steps taken toward
Resurrecting an interrupted life.
Jean, this is wonderful! Rhyme can be charming sometimes and cumbersome others. Here, the lack of rhyme lets your story soar, lets the words sing.
…les pleuerueses,
gentle-hearted women
Clad in black and funereal crepe
Who could weep on command…
Gorgeous. I loved reading about les pleureuses! Made me think of the ‘sin-eaters’, who served the same purpose in old Ireland and Scotland. They mourned in exchange for a loaf of bread and some beer.
Bravo!