POEMS
WILLIAM LOGAN
The Wax-Modelers
To make wax models of the dead,
their livers, lungs, and broken hearts,
is not the lowliest of arts.
The feelings must be cast in lead.
Where does the mortal soul exist?
In dry apartments of a fate
where noisy unpaid Shylocks wait
the resurrection of the dead.
In heaven will our bodies take
the form they loved themselves
to
be
in some austere philosophy
that kept our living selves awake?
Or will the naked dead surround
us at the cold gates of the gods,
who claim that though we beat the odds
we lost our beauty underground?
Pity the dead in their distress:
Rochefoucauld knew, or should have known,
each meets his long decay alone.
True love, like prayer, is pitiless.
The brighter clothing of our flesh
will drop away, and leave its mark
in all that genuflective dark
where we must learn to sin afresh.
