mourn accurately

don’t wallow in the generalities
allowing grief to mask, to bloom in sad opacity
like some deceptive, flowering weed
choking you like a thicket of blackberry

sadness like this is the cloaca
the excretory passage of sorrow
knowledge that you were, somehow, implicit
in the distancing from death by statistics
160 million people were killed by war in the 20th century

still, we have a lot of good museums
now that the sting has worn off
and though our widow’s weeds
were sewn straight into our flesh
the sutures left long enough to abscess
no one seems to mention the smell

we keep our bereaved timed:
a month’s mind
the seven days of Shiva
the contemptible smallness of a minute