Gloria Mundi

Poem by Edward Ahern

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---

I am in title his executor,
de facto the chief mourner.
He lived his adult life alone
but did die with company-
a hired tender and me.

A man who admitted
to fallibility but rarely
to vices or wrongdoing,
a man so private that I
read his past in his papers.

I buried and eulogized him
and marshalled all the wealth
he’d been reluctant to spend,
hard earned but not enjoyed,
for distribution to strangers.

I was perhaps his closest friend
and huckster for the indulgences
I wanted him to give himself,
but now must strew his measure
to the unknowing and the greedy.

---

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty-odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over four hundred fifty stories and poems published so far and eight books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of eight review editors.