the crushed sound of the grass, and the crumpled lilacs
falling into a mass of shadow lilacs
already lying there. Several low notes
sound from an owl, and each grows shorter.
From the pasture above the graveyard, the coydogs' howls
collect like a fabulous blanket over us:
the moon, the sort of federal color she most
admired, has a creeping softness that increases
each quarter hour. And suddenly the air
is so sensitive! We smell the scent
of lilacs on her table, hear her grace,
high and ardent, see ourselves, grouped
like a nimbus in the lampglow by the old piano.
Fight the Good Fight,
she trills, while the gentle
shadows pressed against the windows soon
overlay the house; and the slow,
profound voice of the honorable
reverend, murmuring, 0,
Lord, protect,
and rolling over the swelled ground toward us,
slips into the shadow of our crescent
like the indirect moonlight now
disappearing in earnest under the rolling
shadow of this blank planet . And there are strange
pictures in all he says, until we wonder
where the dead go, who are the dead?
Then her dog lies down beside her granite tombstone,
a voice calls:
Hush, Gulley, hush .
..
Her long name glowing last
is draped in a ribbon of darkness like a statue,
and we are divided from her forever now.
But how much greater she seems to us since
we have seen just how the earth makes its full
exchanges, and how death is not, not really
like this place, but public, historical,
and in it each moment of the cycle
-month, day, hour, slow minute
