Death had passed there before, elaborate in black ribbon and the sombre faced ritual of undertakers repeating a daily routine. The observers wept to see it. Tears framed by that moment, unlike the ones which had come before and those which followed after. Those were eroding tears, endlessly absorbed by un-reactive fixtures in shared homes and solitude, the ones which fed from and into the cortege of neat stepping black horses drained away in their footsteps.