The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.
Ernest Hemingway
Lol. The imagery was brilliant and I love how you uphold the serious tone until that final line. Brilliant. I must say that some lines were a little confusing but that only adds to the charm and everything makes sense by the end. To be honest, the only thing I found wrong with it was the punctuation in your first stanza. I would suggest -
From the first moment
the dead lose currency; open casket or closed,
in the descent, edges blur, memory begins
to resemble people
