Keening
Kathleen Kenny
The old rite denounced, though not passed away,
here tonight it is cast in the form of a rosary.
The women of the parish keen the newly dead.
With chants they lift Nellie from the coffin-bed,
dance her overhead on an air of blue incense,
in a gold jig of candle-flame, on moaning tongues.
Here tonight at the Receiving In,
they are making rhythm, a cradling-frame.
They are humming her life, saying her.
*Keening: a chant for the dead, denounced by the Roman Catholic Church.
Kathleen Kenny is a writer of Irish parentage who lives and works in
Newcastle upon Tyne, England. She earns her living as a part-time creative
writing tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning. Her latest collection
of poems, Firesprung, was recently published by Red Squirrel Press.