On the highway, I passed a funeral procession.
It was not much of one as such things go.
The black hearse was polished to a high gloss.
The limousine with the immediate family followed the hearse.
Then came six or seven unwashed cars of cousins and friends.

I said to myself, "Solonche, look well on this because this
is what yours will be, not much of one as such things go,
your corpse in the casket in the black hearse polished
to a high gloss, followed by your wife and daughter
in the limousine, then six or seven unwashed cars."

So I looked well on it. I kept the headlights of the hearse
in my mirror as they receded, as they faded, until
they looked like a flickering candle before going out.
How fast I had to drive to do that. How fast I drove to do that.
                        

It was all a lie. And we knew it.
She wasn't kind. She wasn't loving. 
She wasn't an inspiration. But we 
didn't care. It didn't matter.

What would have been 
gained by saying she was an angry 
woman, that she was full of hate, 
that she was hard and cold, that all 

she inspired in her daughters 
was fear and icy disappointment?
Perhaps we would have felt 
a momentary satisfaction. 

A bitter smile might have passed 
over our lips, but the guilt would 
have followed, stronger than ever, 
touching even this, casting its shadow, 

longer than ever, reaching even here.
They were lies, but they tasted good.
They satisfied. The human heart lives 
on them. They are its bread.
                        

	(Alan Dugan died in 2003)

First of all, this is not a funeral 
oration. I didn’t attend your funeral. 
I wasn’t invited. Why should I be? 
I’m not family, not even distantly. 
I’m not a friend. I’m not an acquaintance.
All I am is a reader. And you don’t know 
me from Adam. But I thought I would 
write this just the same. After all, the 
mouse you wrote a funeral oration for 
didn’t know you from Adam. Okay, so 
you were never big enough to make 
the cover of Time. (Has any poet ever 
been big enough to make the cover of Time?) 
Your obit is in it, along with the obits 
of Gisele Mackenzie, 76, of colon cancer, 
Burbank Calif. and Charles Bronson, 81, 
of pneumonia, Los Angeles, and Rand 
Brooks, 84, it doesn’t say of what, Santa 
Ynez, Calif. (Never heard of him either, 
actor, played Scarlett O’Hara’s first husband 
in Gone With the Wind.) And you, “Alan 
Dugan, 80, American poet who alternately 
endeared and offended readers with his 
language – with its liberal scatological 
references – and such prosaic themes as 
drinking, irksome jobs and masturbation, 
of pneumonia, in Hyannis, Mass.” As if 
there were any other way one could endear 
or offend. Oh, American poet.