Flores Muertas

-Brian Mendonça 

Flowers for the dead

will soon be

dead flowers

Like the flowers 

after All Souls Day

Cemeteries strewn

with garlands of waste.

Fresh orange marigolds

sell by the wayside

But often

for torans

artificial flowers 

look fresher 

for longer.

(St. Andrew's Church cemetery 

Vasco, Goa

9 November 2026)

Notes

Flores Muertas: (Spanish) Dead flowers.

2 November is All Souls Day. People decorate the graves of the departed.

toran: Decoration on the door at the entrance to a house 

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Pic by Brian Mendonça.