Cohere with Atoning

The hammer on the headstone at last
will delete the two dates and the dash
which signified your running in brief,
a century or decades, or a few weeks.

It will be like a family reunion:
Hitler and the pizza delivery guy,
the Walmart cashier and Albert Einstein,
Goliath, the autistic child from three pews behind;

but everyone will be in their birthday suits
while something like a layered cake of truth
appears to each as the party horns
roll out scrolls of their labours born.

The mattocks of the angels will sink the six feet;
you will lift out like a balloon in the street.
All you wondered about shall million fold;
if there were the little screens to hold

when answers sound to the what's and the why's
the invariable tweet would tweet TMI.
Some will wish they were turned to powder.
Some their earth's pride will make them yet prouder.

Your lifetime a labour determines the hue,
if glistening fresh or stillborn blue,
what you sowed intends to blazon true.
Each flaking of dust will have been a seed
you took captive for love, or nuked with greed.

The grave-breaking - hear! - has already begun:
not a sledge, but a quiet key, has undone
the lid: now's to cohere with atoning,
now to the last, all of creation is groaning.