victory?

sitting in these drowsy deadwood pews
we're at a flowered funeral.
we're still awake, though,
and alive and all that,
but there is a certain kind of unlife in the air.
its not dying that concerns me, so
much as death
in all its cold stingless stillness,
and while it may not have any victory,
it sure does have our attention,
and, for now at least,
it feels like we've been stricken, or stung,
or robbed.
but louder than the hollow creaking of these pews,
louder than the swallowed sobs,
even louder, somehow, than the stiff silence,
is the sound of our words,
the song of our hope,
and the yearning of our souls.