I am foreign and do not understand.
I burn my dead
or lower them into the pit.
How is it that these people
do not believe what I see as fact?
How is it?
The body now an empty vessel
the burial of sorts begins
on a ground too hard to dig,
but perhaps the bird are better
and nature truly knows
that the soul moves at the moment
the copse relinquishes its grasp.
How is it
that they might be heathens
but I have burnt the dead?
How is it
that a scattering of birds
is not better than a crypt?
I do not know because I am foreign
and do not understand.
The Poetry Of J.P. 