The Vigil
By John Herlihy

1
The vigil goes on,
The mourners assemble.
The vigil goes on,
The dead do not tremble.

The candles create shadows, then swallow them whole;
The body lies lifeless in a state of seeming repose.
The soul has departed; there is nothing left to wonder;
The fragile mirror of life has shattered completely asunder.
Look into the individual pieces and see revealed,
Coins of a life in situ with all the events unsealed.

The vigil taking place is not about the dead but the living;
The body of the dead person still in the process of giving,
Of memories and regrets, of something lost, gone, puff.
The candles are still burning, but they too will go snuff.
The heavy funeral flowers give off an aura of emotion and loss,
Within the hearts of the mourners, they are carrying a cross.

Here lies the story of a life written in that velvet-lined coffin,
Whose telling would breathe words into the body’s cooling embers,
Words that if told would begin to glow thru the tips of its members,
Like a rushing stream, he would not stop to be observed with caution.
Now, as people gazed upon him, he had arrived at the end of time;
The foreign self now emerged, the deepest joys now truly gone.

The air contains real unhappiness full of collective soul and spirit.
The mourners sit around reflecting generously on the deceased’s merit.
They could be lying there in state wondering what lost life means,
Dead to the world, its beauty, its profound mystery, its fragile seams,
Ready to break apart and disappear at the slightest inconvenience,
Small wonder the mourners’ hearts stir with unexpected penitence.

One by one they approach the casket full of expectation,
Swallowing their own fear and dread of life’s decapitation,
Looking for a sign from the body that the dead person is still alive,
A flutter of the eyelid perhaps or a movement of the thumb,
Something to break the reverie and strike the onlooker dumb;
But the body lies truly dead with no reasonable chance to revive.



2
The vigil inspires
An aura of blessing.
The vigil inspires
An impulse of guessing.

There is another kind of vigil that announces no departure,
No leave-taking, no sudden disappearance, no unearthly rupture.
Between mother and daughter, father and son, no imminent fracture,
All go about their business free of any premonition of disaster.
The day is breaking, the world is turning, and I am my own master,
When in truth life is a vigil with significance that is much vaster.

I bid good-bye to a childhood friend expecting to see him tomorrow,
Little did I know I was already in vigil soon to become real sorrow.
A niece has a need of money and goes to her uncle hoping to borrow;
She will pay him back next week, isn’t there always another tomorrow?
The child laughed as hard as could be and simply jumped like a toy;
Could anyone envision something might happen to this incredible joy?

I bid good-bye to my friend Rodo thinking this time it is the last;
He suffers a severe case of asthma where every breath is a gasp.
I take leave of my paralyzed elder brother thinking this time is the last;
He soldiers on creating a vigil between us that holds forever fast.
I kiss my mother good-bye as she wanders through the dream of senility;
She has forgotten the names of her children, forsaken of her maternal ability.

Life is a vigil that spans morning, noon and through the long night,
Vigil of every season, either snows of winter or heat of summer’s blight.
Vigil looks through doors and windows to witness the sacredness of living;
Vigil fills us with blessing when our behavior becomes acts of giving;
Vigil never takes its leave; it accompanies us wherever we wander;
Vigil is eloquent, with a silent presence we dare not squander.

We are in vigil
In each moment
As if the last.

We are in vigil
In each moment
No future, no past.

We are in vigil.
In each moment
Hold fast its mast.