Star light on a ring of snow, two men, one imperceptibly shorter than the other, begin to dig a grave for a fallen clown.
It’s harder than they think, this clown being by now at this later stage, more jolly than perhaps is best given the circumstances.
They hunker down for a long dig and talk about the effects of green-house emissions on global warming and the rising price of fine salmon.
They’ll dig through to night to bury this half-remembered joker as close to the centre of the earth as they can get.
They plunge and punch and push his bloated frame deep into the warm earth as storms lash their fine bespoke suits, muddy now in the torrent.
But he won’t go down, not this way, not whole.
They’ll have to hack him up, slap and slice the fat from all around, like whittling lard to make an old toy soldier fit back in the box.
Once their done, what’s left of our Jester strewn in and around the cavity, they’ll lie on the wet grass in the burning morning air and light a cigarette to share.
They laugh at their ruined suits and the night’s wet fury but somehow they manage to eulogise their deceased and dismembered charge.
He’ll be remembered for that quick maudlin temper, his sweet rages and biting barbs, the purity of his joy and the harshness of his gaze – but he wont be coming back, at least not back through the earth.
Destiny and Irony will sleep well tonight.
