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Lizette Woodworth Reese
Now since they plucked them for your grave,
And left the garden bare
As a great house of candlelight,
Oh, nothing else so fair!
I knew before that they were white.
In April by a wall,
A dozen or more. That people died
I did not know at all.
White clouds that change and pass,
And stars that shine awhile,
Dew water on the grass,
A fox upon a stile.
A river broad and deep,
A slow boat on the waves,
My sad thoughts on the sleep
That hollows out the graves.
How does it happen, tell me,
That I who was most erudite of lawyers,
Who knew Blackstone and Coke
Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech
The court-house ever heard, and wrote
A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese
How does it happen, tell me,
That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,
While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,
Has a marble block, topped by an urn
Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,
Has sown a flowering weed?
Prepare your wreaths, Aonian maids divine,
To strew the tranquil bed where I shall sleep;
In tears, the myrtle and the laurel steep,
And let Erato's hand the trophies twine.
No parian marble, there, with labour'd line,
Shall bid the wand'ring lover stay to weep;
There holy silence shall her vigils keep.
Save, when the nightingale such woes as mine
Shall sadly sing; as twilight's curtains spread,
There shall the branching lotos widely wave,
Sprinkling soft show'rs upon the lily's head,
Sweet drooping emblem for a lover's grave!
And there shall Phaon pearls of pity shed,
To gem the vanquish'd heart he scorn'd to save!
a thin book of days
to bury the dead in
elsewhere the wall
and no one able to pay for it
our want was so sudden
we laughed at it
how poorly formed it was
a ship turned out of relation
to what satisfied
like an appointment
at the grave of a clerk
at the grave
marked with a red cross
I roll tobacco
if I dine alone
if I go to the grave with my hat on
if god is a paper bed
I rise in the morning
an infinite room is the grave
for the finest falling body
the overthrown
and irregular body
the no body to know
how to pass
in the raw timber
I see nothing of the hill
but ruins
what a dreadful thing it is
to look down the precipice
into a grave
board on board
men full of pillage making money
of some honest joy
I am at any time
ready for vacation
practicing to be simple
imagine the prizes we desire
in the present
this very body prepared
for his journey
down in the grave
a corpse going to the grave
how everybody looks
going up and down
like a tress or vine
into the ash of hands
so weary so long