Vienna exposition, 1873
Given a dead body, to resolve it
into carbonic acid, ammonia and water
safely, rapidly and not unpleasantly.
– Sir Henry Thompson
A glass box of ashes and a working model —
a furnace constructed from refracting brick
domed with metal. It is passed by promenades
of frock coats and ladies’ lustring frocks.
The Wurstelprater’s low-brow carnival
tidied up, crooked streets made straight walks,
fetid homes pulled down. A new channel
excavated for the Danube. And this glass box.
Sanitation the challenge of the century,
an urgency disposing men to work
on disposal of the dead. Cholera laps
the city’s feet, beyond the Prater’s park.
And further on, Europe’s crowded churchyards
suppurate into groundwater. Acids gasp
from the sealed pustules of vaults. More deaths
burgeon ahead, a Malthusian cusp.
Professor Brunetti’s exhibit, a retort
to cremate a corpse. Reducing it
to four pounds of pale carbonate
after four hours in a shroud of heat.
A process now made possible by progress —
steel rendered strong enough
to withstand the heat of cannons
for war’s shouting mouth.
And the new reverberatory furnace
can render flesh scentlessly to charcoal
out of contact with the flame’s harsh tongues.
Transmuted, not unpleasantly. Resolved.