Summary

An unnamed speaker is conducting a funeral ceremony for a woman who has died. They have a list of commands that start with calling muscular cigar rollers to whip up ice cream in the kitchen: “Call the roller of big cigars, / the muscular one, and bid him whip / in the kitchen cups of concupiscent curds” (1-3). They then instruct the women attending to wear whatever it is they usually wear and demand the men attending bring flowers but wrapped in old newspapers: “Let the wenches dawdle in such dress / as they are used to wear, and let the boys / bring flowers in last month’s newspapers” (4-6). The final couplet of the first stanza moves away from concrete imagery into something more abstract as the speaker concludes that "the only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream" (8).

In the second stanza, the speaker moves from...