[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Roger—
I made a few revisions before your post, some of them in line with your suggestions. Let me share my thinking on your critiques.
L2: I wanted to establish the contrast between the ritualized, public, impersonal, stoicism inherent in military funerals and the sincere, private, personal, grief that the speaker expresses at the end. It seems as though the military provides a scripted funeral that encourages the mourners to replace grief with honoring. That’s why I need “theater.”
L6: I agree that “then” needs to go. I replaced it with “is,” which creates a passive voice construction that I’m not completely happy with since I already have “are sprinkled” two lines later, but I think it’s a slight improvement.
L7: I wanted “sharp” to suggest a contrast between the softness of the flag “floating” in the arms of the deceased’s comrades like a comforting blanket, and the hard, cold, mathematically defined military rituals that deny or forbid emotion. I included numbers to reinforce this: “six” pallbearers, “triangle,” “three” times “seven” rifle blasts.
L 11: You didn’t mention it, but I decided that the inverted word order in “Three times the seven rifles blast” was annoying. I replaced it with the more natural, “The seven rifles blast three times,” which has the added bonus of ending with three stressed syllables, imitating the sound of three volleys.
L 14: I chose the antiquated expression “quick and the dead” from the old translation of the Nicene Creed to evoke the ritual-ness of the proceedings.
I had the same feeling you did about interrupting the rhythm/cadence, and my decision to go with 2-stanza structure was how I tried to fix it.
L17: I’m still thinking about the stanza break after line 17.

Thanks for your perceptive comments and for staying with me on this.
Glenn