The Shape of the Coroner
The Shape of the Coroner - meaning Summary
Illusion Meets Mundane Death
The poem stages a brief, ritualized morning in which ceremonial gestures—palms, brass, fans—are interrupted by a coroner who dissolves spectacle into a mundane act of burial. The coroner both ends the performance and administers an elixir into the ground, turning ornate imagery toward a shabby human presence. The poem explores the collapse of illusion into everyday mortality and the uneasy meeting of ritual and banality.
Read Complete AnalysesIt was the morn And the palms were waved And the brass was played Then the coroner came In his limpid shoes. The palms were waved For the beau of illusions. The termagant fans Of his orange days Fell, famous and flat, And folded him round, Folded and fell And the brass grew cold And the coroner’s hand Dismissed the band. It was the coroner Poured this elixir Into the ground, And a shabby man, An eye too sleek, And a biscuit cheek. And the coroner bent Over the palms. The elysium lay In a parlor of day.
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