Eulogy

He died last week at half-past two.
At his wake 
maudlin friends and family
stand still at his casket 
blithely grieving 
rubbing his languid hands.

Who knows what happened to him?
Cared about this man?
Speaks about his stilted ambitions?
Lost loves?
Those mumbling about his death,
where should they look for his obituary?

I did not ask anyone to sing for me.
To christen me.
Embrace me posthumously.
Fill the front of this room with flowers.
I always understood the inanities 
of death’s door.
It has no hinges.
So, I did not ask for kindness 
after midnight, 
a little before 
half-past two, from you.

On the Post Eve of the Pandemic

I stood under the buzzing street lights morning
waiting for the bus that was forty minutes late.
We heard on the news 
that spiked protein cells severing our
cells existed around the corner somewhere.
Somewhere in the breathing breath of others.

And Nature’s spiked protein warriors waged
war against Us.
Unspilled blood cannot be asked 
what it thinks about cells murdering cells.

And we Homo Americanus
thought that we were It –
no other people existed
in the universe 
until The American Dead were buried 
(in trenches) in the United States.

I wondered, while laying down later that night, still alive
staring at stars on my bedroom ceiling that did not exist:
Who cries in this ongoing mourning?
Are they the American people 
(the people we hold self-evident)
barely holding on to their daily bread?

My pallid, stoic-self, left to join the dead.
I tapped the wavy humid air 
and told the woman waiting for the bus 
to stay focused.
That her mission is to survive 
the Pandemic, the protein warriors, and to keep her
thumb on the pulse of staying alive.
What else is there? What else is there?

Hakim Hasan was born in Brooklyn, New York. Formerly the Director of Public Programs at the Museum of the City of New York, he also co-founded the Urban Dialogues Seminar Series at Metropolitan of New York. Currently, Mr. Hasan is working on a collection of poems. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.