A Blanket of Pink Roses

In the foreground, my Aunt Marita Butler Brimhall, 

who was the baby in yesterday's post.

We are at the 1977 funeral of her mother, Susie Redd Butler,
who was the young mother in white,
who had been a widow for 47 years.

Marita's younger sister & my mother, Olga Butler Hopper, is behind her, 

wearing one of her signature bright ethnic outfits.

Each of them has scored a keepsake rose 

from the blanket of soft pink roses atop the coffin,

just a bit of which is visible at the extreme left,

under a sunshade.

It is an Arizona Sunlight day, over-contrasty for photographs,

as you can see by the sunblast on the group of relatives at the right.

CRYING

Hooves of heavy snow stamp the pasture

fierce wind     the horseman exactly

history has no verbs

verbs are those

trying to push life ahead

toward even darker

implications

a violin induces us

to turn to the past

to hear the crying in mankind's early years

the honor

and misfortune of lost prophets

let misfortune fall

on the level of our understanding
each family unfolds its banner
bedsheets, kitchen smoke, dusk

Bei Dao

Translated by Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong

Unlock; poems by Bei Dao, New Directions, 2000, page 47.