Meditations in a Cemetery by Maxwell Bodenheim

/ Death, / Grandiosely hackneyed subject, / I live in a house one hundred years old / Placed in the middle of a cemetery. / The cemetery is bothered by mausoleums / Where fragments of Greek and Gothic / Lie in orderly shame. / Slabs and crosses of stone / Remain unacquainted with the bones / That they must strive to introduce. / The trees retain their guiltless sibilants. / The trees tell me upon my morning walk: / "In other cemeteries, / Shakespeare, Maeterlinck and Shaw / Fail to produce the slightest awe / In trees that do not create for an audience. " / Being finalities, the grass and trees / Find no need for rules of etiquette. / Delicacy must be effortless / Or else it changes to a patched-up dress.

/ But delicate and coarse are words / For quickness that tries to linger, / And slowness that strives to be fast! / Emotions and thoughts are merely / The improvisations of motion, / And lack a permanent content. / An aging tree is wiser / Than an aging poet, / And death is wiser than both. / The scale ascends out of sight / And I recall that the morning is light / And smaller notes await me. / The tomb-stones around my path / Have been crisply visited by names / To which they bear no relation. / Imagine the perturbation / Of a stone removed / From the comprehension of a mountain / And branded with the name of A. Rozinsky! / Recollecting journeys of my own, / I close my eyes and leave the stone.