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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.

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