Howard Firkin
When the days of my ordinariness are over
and I become a corpse—
that remarkable thing—
let me sing
in decay and the expiration of gases
of the good commonsense of dissolution
and the beauty of the host of smaller things
unknowingly, I always was,
and joyful,
let me lead the masses of my tiny choir
in singing of the quiet satisfaction Death,
that brisk Dutch housewife,
takes in tidying up,
and as the singing ends,
a quiet, descant hum,
remember,
not Amen, but ever, even so.