TWO DEPARTED MEN

The two men met their maker
somewhere close to Gundagai
on a misty stretch of highway.

I arrived home to hear the news
from a boggle eyed, vague Irishman
who delivered it like a joke without a punch-line.

I drank straight whisky
to reassure myself that I was alive
but it didn't beat the chill inside me.

The younger man would have read
theological themes in the mangled wreck
and the gritty particularity of his dying.

The older man would have just sighed
and muttered some melancholy phrase
with his tremorous voice crackling.

The funeral was a clamorous affair
that would have caused the younger man
to lay down with a migraine.

The old man would have gathered it all in
and squeezed it into a tiny declaration
that it was nice and the people were good.

They are buried under dewy grass,
on the outskirts of the city,
brothers in the shadow of a chapel.