March’s bitter morning thawed

the frozen skin of the sound
as Harvard’s gothic shadow fell

upon the burying ground.

  

Snow in its gelid costume dressed

the icy stand of birch
where the tilted gravestones shelved

against the Methodist church.

  

The leafless birches sank within

the shallow swamp of snow,
a Japanese rice-paper screen’s

calligraphy aglow,

  

like great blue herons stalking

carp in silent pools
beneath the melting icicles’

dripping, glassy jewels.

  

The birches formed their rank above

the waters of paradise,
warming the gravestones’ chiseled names

in Dante’s lake of ice.


On standing pools wind shivered

over the traitorous dead,
where starving Ugolino gnawed

Archbishop Roger’s head.

  

The winter’s sculptured rites of snow,

like glittering evidence,
looked forward to the crocuses

teasing the iron fence,

  

the mourners each spring resurrected

to words no longer said;
but memory of the dead can never

resurrect the dead.

  

The promises the living swear

betray their long decrease—
the mourner’s lie In Memory Of,

the fraud of Rest in Peace,

  

where buried on this sacred ground,

in frozen, barren earth,
lie the distant soiled past

and frenzied rage of birth.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 16 Number 9, on page 23
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