From the Book of Obsolescence

The career of paid mourner,
That is, funeral cryer,
Has a longer tradition
In China than in the West
Where it’s never now practiced.
Nonetheless, the western name
For such a professional
Is etymologically
Quite a piece of packaging—

The root word, meros, was share,
Part, lot, as in, one’s fair share,
One’s portion, one’s allotment.
Adjacent to that, moros,
One’s share in the sense of fate,
One’s lot in life. Typical
Figurative extension,
From human social contracts
To the way the cosmos works—

Gods and saints like prayers and praise
And insist on gratitude,
Since humans of high standing
Like and insist on those things.
Apportioning resources
Is what societies do,
So surely somewhere someone
Doles out resources to you
From the cosmic warehouse, too.

By classical Greek we have Moira
As name of one of the fates.
Meanwhile, from their word for speech
And discourse, logos, the Greeks
Coined the all-purpose suffix,
-Logy, useful everywhere
For the study or knowledge
Of whatever’s so suffixed.
Technically, moirology

Ought to mean the field of fate.
Somehow, however, it popped
In the nineteenth century
As formal nomenclature
For a funeral cryer.
Doesn’t the term remind you
Of one of those packages
Containing what you ordered
In some strange set of boxes?

What a service that would be,
What a person that would be
To hire for your funeral—
A scientist of your fate,
Personal moirologist,
Explaining your cosmic share,
The dimensions of your lot,
And then rending their garments
Over you, loudly weeping.