In Paco Cemetery in Manila Caskets let end-wise into the wall Claim each a two-foot square of moss-edged space In the great stone circle.
Ylang-ylang trees With year-long steps parade the centuries Slow. Just now Evening is heavy with their breath; The dizzying sweetness tastes of death, And all around Waxy-yellow petals are fallen on the ground.
Picture a cemetery in Manila where coffins are slid sideways into a stone wall, each one taking up just a two-foot square of mossy space. That small, cramped detail sets the tone: the dead here are packed neatly into a great circle, ordered and contained.
Then the poem turns to the ylang-ylang trees, which seem to walk through time at a crawl, "year-long steps" carrying them across centuries. The one-word line "Slow." makes you feel that stillness. As evening comes, the air grows thick with the trees' perfume, so sweet it's dizzying, and the speaker says it "tastes of death." Pleasure and decay blur together.
The speaker doesn't announce a big feeling, but the mood is quiet and heavy, a calm kind of melancholy. The poem ends on fallen yellow petals, a gentle picture of time passing and things dropping away, which is what the title "The Past" seems to point to.