Men at Funerals

Men are not good at funerals.
They're not sure what to say.
Untrained in all arts of keening
and life's broad emotions,
instead they lapse into cliche.

'Of course it did', perhaps,
when told by the grieving
that it came as a shock.
'There, there', or that old trope,
the mediocre blues:
'Come far today, have you?',
used in conversation
with someone new to you,
and whom you'll soon forget.

At all of the funerals I've been to
my brothers and I have been asked
'you're David's boys, aren't you?'
One day I'll buck the mediocre blues
and say 'why yes, we are, but aren't
we all Adam's children?'