The Shop

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Title:     The Shop
Author: Eunice Tietjens [More Titles by Tietjens]

(The articles sold here are to be burned at funerals for
the use of the dead in the spirit world.)
The master of the shop is a pious man, in good odor
    with the priests.
He is old and honorable and his white moustache
    droops below his chin.
Mencius, I think, looked so.
The shop behind him is a mimic world, a world
    of pieties and shams--the valley of remembrance--the
    dwelling place of the unquiet dead.
Here on his shelves are ranged the splendor and the
    panoply of life, silk in smooth gleaming rolls, silver
    in ingots, carving and embroidery and jade, a
    scarlet bearer-chair, a pipe for opium....
Whatever life has need of, it is here,
And it is for the dead.
Whatever life has need of, it is here. Yet it is here in
    sham, in effigy, in tortured compromise.
The dead have need of silk. Yet silk is dear, and
    there are living backs to clothe.
The rolls are paper.... Do not look too close.
The dead I think will understand.
The carvings, too, the bearer-chair, the jade--yes,
    they are paper; and the shining ingots, they are
    tinsel.
Yet they are made with skill and loving care!
And if the priest knows--surely he must know!--
    when they are burned they'll serve the dead as
    well as verities.
So living mouths can feed.
The master of the shop is a pious man. He has attained
    much honor and his white moustache droops
    below his chin.
"Such an one" he says "I burned for my own father.
And such an one my son will burn for me.
For I am old, and half my life already dwells among
    the dead."
And, as he speaks, behind him in the shop I feel the
    presence of a hovering host, the myriads of the
    immortal dead, the rulers of the spirit in this
    land....
For in this kingdom of the dead they who are living
    cling with fevered hands to the torn fringes of the
    mighty past. And if they fail a little, compromise....
The dead I think will understand.
  Soochow

[The end]
Eunice Tietjens's poem: Shop

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