Oraisons Funèbres

Yoko Ono Said Sunlight Does Not Know the Difference

Sunlight does not know the difference.

It kisses frogs, princes, babies, old men,

ugly girls, beauty queens, lovers, rapists

—it kissed Mr. Hitler when he was alive,

it kissed the dead as they lay in trenches,

cast away in heaps, bulldozed into sliding

dunes of lead-colored limbs—you saw

those gray photographs of gray skin

reflecting gray sky, but the sun

came out after they were taken

and kissed the graves

of the nameless.

What does the sunlight know

from corpses? The sunlight

does not cringe away

from corpses, it has kissed

the rotten bodies of cats

and crickets and children

and pharoahs wrapped in linen,

emperors wrapped in silk,

slaughter wrapped in grass,

hidden in weeds, floating in sewers.

It is the last grace of this world, so

when I am dead, lay me out

in a field, abandon me

in a desert, let the sunlight

kiss me and forget.

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