Church Monuments

BY GEOR GE HERBERT

While that my soul repairs to her devotion,

Here I intomb my flesh, that it betimes
May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;
To which the blast of death's incessant motion,
Fed with the exhalation of our crimes,
Drives all at last. Therefore I gladly trust

My body to this school, that it may learn

To spell his elements, and find his birth
Written in dusty heraldry and lines ;
Which dissolution sure doth best discern,
Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth.
These laugh at jet, and marble put for signs,

To sever the good fellowship of dust,

And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them,
When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
To kiss those heaps, which now they have in trust?
Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
And true descent: that when thou shalt grow fat,

And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know,

That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust. Mark, here below,
How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,
That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.
 Dedication for a Plot of Ground
Launch Audio in a New Window
BY W ILLIAM C AR LOS WILLIA MS

This plot of ground

facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Dickinson Wellcome
who was born in England; married;
lost her husband and with
her five year old son
sailed for New York in a two-master;
was driven to the Azores;
ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,
met her second husband
in a Brooklyn boarding house,
went with him to Puerto Rico
bore three more children, lost
her second husband, lived hard
for eight years in St. Thomas,
Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed
the oldest son to New York,
lost her daughter, lost her "baby,"
seized the two boys of
the oldest son by the second marriage
mothered themthey being
motherlessfought for them
against the other grandmother
and the aunts, brought them here
summer after summer, defended
herself here against thieves,
storms, sun, fire,
against flies, against girls
that came smelling about, against
drought, against weeds, storm-tides,
neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,
against the weakness of her own hands,
against the growing strength of
the boys, against wind, against
the stones, against trespassers,
against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands,

domineered over this grass plot,
blackguarded her oldest son
into buying it, lived here fifteen years,
attained a final loneliness and

If you can bring nothing to this place

but your carcass, keep out.

Crying in Front of a Man

BY KA TE GA LE

To my first love, I wept profusely.

These tears confused the boy, and he would act.
Generally, he took me out to eat.
I grew fat, sobbing my way into some of the best
restaurants in Richmond.

My first husband ignored the initial shattering of tears.

But if I went on grovelling, wailing long enough
hed collect me from the floor
give me a bit more grocery money, wipe my eyes
tell me it would be okay by and by.

My second husband despised my tears.

Hed seen women crawl and shake enough,
said the vipers can enter a trance at will
and let their best sobs heave ho to twist a man
and bend him into shape.

I trouble not this third man with my tears.

Have in fact forgotten how to cry
and in forgetting have grown steel eyes,
a molten core like mad Vesuvius, am held in check
by nothing but the weather and the whims of fate.

[That]
BY LES LIE HARRI SON

That this is the morning in which nothing much

that the sky is still there and the water dresses

accordingly that only at night does the water rest

vanish from sight that the stars are too small too far

to register there that all our names too are writ

invisibly on water that abiding requires more hope

than I can possibly acquire that hope is not a thing

with feathers that hope is a thing with a fist a thin

crust sketched over oceans that hope is what despair

uses for bait come in hope says the water's fine

that hope is the blood with which you write letters

that start dear sea dear ocean stop asking so fucking

much that hope is a telegram delivered by men

in pairs men in uniform a telegram that says missing

stop that says once again presumed lost stop