Dust lined, our lives now mean a name, a date,
A wishing only, the stiff cloistered wait.
Bent ivy curls around our plaques, our years
A sordid stone now only tells, our fears
Now realized in the blank cruel earth, our names
Whispered in swift soft spoken words: the shame
Of the living. Longing to pronounce for them
Their muffled, misread sighs, we have attempted
To raise our loose long limbs, but know instead
That we can only dream. Our lives’ been read
A hundred times, at least, by our unfocused
Re-telling. He was once a schemer, shushed
By life’s strange misplaced harm. And once his hands
Were warm and pulsed with hope, but years by sands
And fate rubbed raw, have stolen his lust for life.
His last large scheme: the dates that match his wife’s.
She, soft and fragile, would laugh always about
Nothing, yet realizing the brevity
Would soon grow faint with chuckles and unspent gaiety.
And you, the living, cannot cry for her.
The cinders only on your face can purge
The pride of being still the brief ones here.
I think that this poem stemmed from reading The Living. Well... that and poetry class.
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