Graveyard by the Sea

I wonder if they sleep better here

so close to the elemental pentameter

of the sea which comes in incessantly?

Just a few square acres of sand

studded mainly with thick posts

as if the coffins beneath were boats

tied fast to prevent further drift.

I half stumble around one pre-dawn,

just a dog following the footprints

of another dog with me, and stop

before one particular grave: a cross

inlaid with large splinters of mirror.

Whoever lies here is distinguished

Certainly, but I wonder—why mirrors?

For signaling?  Who?  No, they’re embedded

in the stone and so can’t be flicked

to reflect the sun or moonlight.

Is the sleeper here unusually vain

and the glass set of the times of dark

ascensions—to smooth the death gown,

to apply a little lipstick to the white

worms of the lips?  No again.  I think

they’re for me and the ones who come

like me at this hour, in this half-light.

The ones who come half-drunk, half-wild

and wholly in fear—so we may gaze

into the ghosts of our own faces

and be touched by this chill of all

chills,--and then go home, alive,

to sleep the sleep of the awake.

--Thomas Lux

Not exactly holiday fare—or is it…? (this is one of those poems that I feel more than understand, though the richness of the metaphors--disturbing as they are--also gives me plenty to think about it)

Comments

[jlb]

It's very reflective (no pun intended); I like the image of the fractured pieces of mirror reflecting our mortality back at us. Or perhaps it is our souls that are fractured, at the knowledge of that mortality, or our memories of loss. Maybe not a Christmas theme, but New Year's perhaps.

For a sea motif, I like John Masefield's Sea Fever: "I must go down to the seas again, to the lonly sea and the sky/And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by..."
http://www.bartleby.com/103/98.html

>^..^<

[jlb]

Also try James Russell Lowell, "After the Burial"
http://www.bartleby.com/248/356.html
>^..^<

[lemming]

As a recovering English major, I'm of the opinion that poetry is meant to be felt rather than analyzed. If you have to pull a poem apart to understand it, it's proof that the poet was trying too hard. (Nothing is wrong with allusions and whatnot, but the professor who tried to tell me Wilfred Owen was writing about the ancient Greeks rather than WW I did not persuade me, B- or no.)

(end of rant)

Great poem - one of my favorite burial grounds includes two tombstones, obviously home-made, with the usual information, but also a picture of the deceased and a lock of their hair. Morbid? Perhaps, but also an indication of great affection.