In this stone sea of unfamiliar names
that will become familiar, given time,
there rolls a rustling quietness, which tames
your rambling nerves. The markers, stained with grime,
stand rigid as sentinels, and here and there
a mausoleum dwarfs their gravitas,
as if to shout to the silencing air,
Here lies a man with money enough to house
the dust of his bones better than living flesh.
That’s nothing new. Beneath the occasional tent,
wet earth rests in piles. Such wounds are fresh.
They will leave scars, fading, if permanent,
and the more you turn down this or that small lane
in search of no particular crypt or plot,
the faster the sacred descends to the mundane,
and the sooner you recognize there is a spot
in the green expanse beyond the spaces filled
that will, should you stay put, come soon to bear
your own name, foreign to this peaceful field
that could just as well be home as anywhere.
