Why No Knew Why

They stood by the pyre,
 As the flames waited to consume,
The offspring close and the rest a little away,
Wondering what put him there,
For he was always warm and gay,
'He sang the happiest lines,'
'The funniest he wrote,' they said of him,
'He cracked the best of jokes,'
'And could whip up a witty one,
Even for questions darkest,'
And so when they saw him on the pyre,
They wondered why he lay there, cold and dead,
When he should be alive and well,
Entertaining one crowd or the other,
They wondered why he simply lay and made them cry.
In the midst of them all, the confused souls,
Souls confused, naive and so far deceived,
Stood one, in stoic silence, weeping softly,
Knowing fully well why he lay where he lay,
Knowing more than what he sang, what he listened to,
And more than what he said, what he didn't,
What he read, over what he wrote,
She knew he said of comedy,
That it was but a parody of tragedy,
And knew he was an eternal fountain of humour,
Only because life had rendered him in every way,
A living joke.