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.
