26 October 2012

Cemeteries: a Sixling



monumental museum
temple and public park
fine and quiet places*
of  picnics and meetings
college study, sex, and
Día de los Muertos

feasts of deaths’ favorite
foods, bottled soda and
booze; sugared skulls, dancing
skeletons, musicians
and family groupings
toasts to health, libations

                                                                                          
to the northern borders
where trick or treaters come
ready or not, too old
for childlike innocence
too macho for coven
new year celebration

their shotguns guard homelands
unmarked graves in wastelands
where grieving is silent
and oral tradition
coexists with myth of
blame and causality

at the nine eleven
memorial, city-
scape replaces desert
three-thousand miles away
and world trade replaces
blood sports of sitting ducks

leaning and weeping walls
surround cultures of death
shrouding the corpse's age
and sex, symbols of faith
in the box and in hands
folded, ready to pray



Reposted for Poets United " Poetry Pantry - #121."  Originally posted for "Theme Thursday for October 25, 2012 - Cemeteries."  The photo is mine.  

*from Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress": "The grave's a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace."  (Also "A Fine and Private Place" the title of a Fantasy novel by Peter Beagle.)



Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast.
Submitte, revised for Poetry Nook

8 comments:

  1. Deep. I especially love the "leaning and weeping walls" and the hands folded to pray.

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  2. Hi Susan,

    Oh my this covers so many things and blends them all together in such a fantastic way. I just felt like I have been through a blender mixing all these different experiences into one. What can I say but it is a wonderfully written poem.

    Thank you ever so much for sharing this with us for this weeks Cemetery Theme Thursday. Hope your weekend is going great.

    God bless.

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  3. swirling meanings and thoughts.....pictures well painted....

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  4. good one.the topical and the timeless merge smoothly.

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  5. Lovely weaving of the place specially the site of 9/11... weeping walls is a great image ~

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  6. Sad ... but I like the photo,and the allusion.

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  7. symbols of faith
    in the box and in hands
    folded, ready to pray

    A poignant reminder that there is faith in the future despite 9/11. Nicely Susan!

    Hank

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  8. This is monumental, literally. It stands right in ones way.

    Brilliant.

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