Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi for publishing this poem in Ariel Chart.


http://www.arielchart.com/2020/02/the-gift-of-myrrh.html





The Gift of Myrrh

Veiling the spicy scent of necrosis

that accompanies all bitter death,

using the sweet balm of myrrh,

always a prefigurement to eternal rest.


While the bent forms of priests,

with drab discs for eyes,

collect dropped alms,

and pray by way of bewitching hymns,

as perfumed beasts guard the walls,


the dead will find

an absence of air, but no lack of charity 

within their enclosed closets

of silence and isolation.


They will also find no absence of myrrh.