Strange Eucharist

He requested in the will that his friends devour his corpse

as they'd chewed up and swallowed down his life.

So on the strange beach where fragmentary figures stand

mandated cannibals feast so merrily and so mournfully.

Lawfully, within the law, according to the terms, they feast,

this legitimate and most permissible eucharist,

each according to disposition and to their several wonts.

Mere grief for seasoning, bereft of forks they grip and gnaw,

raw flesh of their friend tasting sweet between their sobs,

and the cuts, though hard to chew, prove succulent indeed.

Out on that beach a ship awaits a voyage with no course,

a crew bellies up full of their captain. The fragments watch.

Images from Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1969)