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
Uh, Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rainforest scare a few years back: our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they? — Homer Simpson