An Unfinished Requiem for Male Chorus and Orchestra That Ends With the Wrath of God, a Black and White Still Life 1985
Alan Catlin
Behind the sliding window, lying
on the slab, eyes closed, a white hospital
sheet neatly folded down at the neck, is the
woman. Her long tri-colored hair is
unnatural, neat, combed straight, washed
clean. There is no mistaking the face
in repose, not so much dead, as temporarily
dminished. Simple identification is as
easy as it is impossible. The words that
could be inscribed on her urn, lie locked
in the vault of her ‘Black Room’, sealed
for the summer, hidden amidst the piles of
papers, the accumulation of years of garbage
and brown bags she kept dead things in, aging
them to perfection. Months after habitation,
objects acquired a scent like death that can
never fully be expunged. Reading The Canon
according to BJC as is meant to be read
by flashlight, in darkness, candles burning
behind the significant color shaded pages,
the palimpsest of hands and indescipherable
tongues reveals the unfathomable, the wrath
of a vicious, savage god reaching out from
a lake of fire inside to close her eyes
before the Offertorium, the Te Deum, that can
never be sung in any language, especially
not her own. What she methodically wrote
to be left behind and read was a pure system
of an incomplete madness. It was almost ironic,
almost laughable that her Canon made more
sense than the answering machine message
from the cementery, whose mason could not
inscribe her name with those of her family
already carved into the land of the dead,
because her name had too many letters.
The message was: “The name provided for
the deceased must be changed
to fit the space allowed. How could this
be done? Please advise at your earliest
possible convenience.”
