Uncle Charles will be buried today. The poem I share today comes from the Poetry Foundation's app. I mourn deeply our loss of Uncle Charles's wisdom; the silence where stories used to be.
On such a day we put him in a box
And carried him to that last house, the grave;
All round the people walked upon the streets
Without once thinking that he had gone.
Their hard heels clacked upon the pavement stones.
A voiceless change had muted all his thoughts
To a deep significance we could not know;
And yet we knew that he knew all at last.
We heard with grave wonder the falling clods,
And with grave wonder met the loud day.
The night would come and day, but we had died.
With new green sod the melancholy gate
Was closed and locked, and we went pitiful.
Our clacking heels upon the pavement stones
Did knock and knock for Death to let us in.
from The Fugitive, 1922