Mieczysław Jastrun
Funeral

The coffin—a furnace of fire and dust,
Its lid but air, so clear, so thin,
And smoke from a man, once flesh, once trust,
Swept through the chimney of history’s sin.

How shall we honor the death you met,
How follow your funeral’s fleeting trace?
A handful of ash with no grave is set,
Drifting between the sky and space.

How can we lay a wreath so bright
On a grave not carved in earth or stone?
An ark that vanishes into night,
Lost where the flames of war have blown.

No solemn guns will bow in sound,
No coffin lowered to the deep,
Only the air—its light unbound—
Marks where the nameless dead now sleep.

And silence rises, vast and wide,
Like a banner crushed beneath the fight,
In choking smoke where corpses hide,
And in a scream—crucified.

Kamila J Gruss