"Marie" by Abraham Sutzkever

Written on a slat of a railway car:

If some time someone should find pearls

threaded on a blood-red string of silk

which, near the throat, runs all the thinner

like life’s own path until it’s gone

somewhere in a fog and can’t be seen—   

If someone should find these pearls   

let him know how—cool, aloof—they lit up   

the eighteen-year-old, impatient heart   

of the Paris dancing girl, Marie.

Now, dragged through unknown Poland—

I’m throwing my pearls through the grate.

If they’re found by a young man—

let these pearls adorn his girlfriend.

If they’re found by a girl—

let her wear them; they belong to her.

And if they’re found by an old man—

let him, for these pearls, recite a prayer.

Abraham Sutzkever, Yiddish poet and survivor of the holocaust, 1913-2010.

"Quintus Septimius Florentis" by Ezra Pound

Theodorus will be pleased at my death,
And someone else will be pleased at the death of         Theodorus,
And yet everyone speaks evil of death.

translated from the Greek Anthology by Ezra Pound

Epitaph by an Unknown Poet

Traveler, do you not know
     how a poet lives beyond the grave?
You stand and read this verse:
     but it is I who speak.
As you read this work aloud,
     your living voice is mine.

Source: Life of Augustine by Possidius, c. 450 CE

"Margaret George" by Margaret George Davidson

Find a Grave

Margaret George Davidson

1869-1897

Moritura (She Who Is About to Die)
I am the mown grass, dying at your feet,
The pale grass, gasping faintly in the sun.
I shall be dead, long, long ere day is done,
That you may say: “The air, to-day, was sweet.”
I am the mown grass, dying at your feet.
I am the white syringa, falling now,
When some one shakes the bough.
What matter if I lose my life’s brief noon?
You laugh, “A snow in June!” I am the white syringa, falling now.
I am the waning lamp that flickers on,—
Trying to give my old, unclouded light
Among the rest that make your garden bright.
Let me still burn till all my oil is gone.
I am the waning lamp that flickers on.
I am your singer, singing my last note.
Death’s fingers clutch my throat.
New grass will grow, new flowers bloom and fall;
New lamps blaze out against your garden wall:
I am your singer, singing my last note.

"Michael Kierkegaard" by Ueno Wayne

Michael Kierkegaard 1756-1838

Consider my case: a man who as a boy

Tending strangers’ sheep on Jutland Heath,

Hungry, lonely, numbed with cold,

Climbed a hummock and railed at God.

Was this the sin against the Holy Ghost,

To stand on a rock and curse the God

So stone-hearted as to afflict

A child already hungered and a-cold?

The memory of it never left me.

When in later life, God had blessed me--

Or cursed me--with riches, men’s esteem, 

And gifted children, demons lashed my soul.

I thought I’d sinned against the Holy Ghost. 

To stop my children drinking my despair,

I laid on them in their tender years

The strictest laws of piety.

Of my seven heirs, two boys lived. The elder 

Drank the black cup, gave up his bishopric. 

The younger--my Benjamin, my best-beloved--

Was also my Isaac, the one I sacrificed.

As his father I believed myself the cause of Søren’s

Melancholy, and Søren my son believed that he

Was the cause of mine. Melancholy men,

We were laconic. Never talked about it.

Link to Find-a-Grave

"Søren" by Ueno Wayne

Find a Grave

I was my father’s Benjamin, his best-loved,

The one he sacrificed.

When he died I made my pilgrimage

To Saeding, Denmark’s poorest hamlet.

I had it in my mind to preach at Saeding Church

The Sunday next. My problem,

How to fill these men in a space so denuded.

My text, the feeding of the multitude.

Here all lies naked and exposed, no place

To hide oneself or hide one’s thoughts.

"Whither can a man flee from thy presence?"

Nowhere on this barren heath.

Outside the kirkyard, I found a tablet, 

Black, inscribed with gilt.

I stood a-stranged like a pawn in check

Where exiles sang remembering Zion.

By the lone larch tree on Jutland Heath

I knew myself as sheer reflection.

By the rivers of Babylon 

I learned to wield the dialectic.

"Are You Digging on My Grave?" by Thomas Hardy

Find a Grave

Floor of Westminster Abbey

  "Are you digging on my grave,

My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No, yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
          'That I should not be true.'" 

"Then who is digging on my grave?
         My nearest dearest kin?"
-- "Ah, no; they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
         Her spirit from Death's gin.' " 

"But some one digs upon my grave?
         My enemy? -- prodding sly?"
-- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
         And cares not where you lie." 

"Then, who is digging on my grave?
         Say -- since I have not guessed!"
-- "O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog, who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
         Have not disturbed your rest?" 

"Ah yes! You  dig upon my grave . . .
         Why flashed it not on me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
         A dog's fidelity!" 

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave
         To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
         It was your resting-place."