Whoosh

It’s already more than a year
since you died on us, just like that.
A little later they swept you,
a small heap of ash, into a black tin box and,
whoosh, lowered you down, an urnful of you,
topped off with a rosary, job done.

They tell me that in your final days
you selected that spot yourself,
chanting and talking nonsense,
joking with anyone who came to help you die,
they say that one as firmly rooted in belief as you
could even console the living in the end.

I, the non-believer,
unconsoled, only saw you later
not ascend to heaven
but descend into the earth
and with clenched fists trembled for you
that with your firm belief you’d be proven right,

first in that small black box and, whoosh,
in all that darkness which
swallowed it up in a flash.