Ode To Those Dead And Forgotten

by Mitchell Zeftel

I'm weeping and I wept all night,
yet I'm trying to sing praises
to those cremated and unknown,
maybe unknowable.
Last night on public radio, they
spoke of a mass funeral in Seattle
for two hundred homeless --
those who had no one to bury them.
Two hundred vials of ash --
O Virgin, save them -- and they
were blessed by authentic clergy
so as to destroy, say,
a conspiracy of silence
which shrouds the saddest eyes.
People found in flat, dusty rooms,
broken Safeway carts.
Yes, they died with no image
in their mirrors.
I've been weeping so much
maybe my tears should bring
a new kind of stained glass window,
because they, the forgotten, stained
their blood on the winds of Seattle.
O Lord, remember their names.
O Virgin, let their blood
be stained also in your eyes.

Excerpt from a collection of poems in the spirit of St. Francis. More on the Internet at http://www.thestreetspirit.org/
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