1955 -- . . . (Sept 6 2020)

1955 — . . .

Sept 6 2020

There are long straight rows

between the headstones.

Between the grave markers, obelisks, epitaphs

tombstones and plaques.

And, apparently, footstones.

Which are placed opposite,

as if to contain the body

or fence off the plot

of good bourgeois suburbanites,

who knew that fences make good neighbours

and always maintained

a well-kept lawn.

I walk here most days.

A pleasant green oasis,

a quiet space

in the city cacophony.

I read the epitaphs

and contemplate their dates.

About beginnings and ends

and what the wise man once said

about the hyphen in between:

that while we can't control when

we have agency

over what we make of this.

And so, over what we'll have left

after we're gone,

aside from these few kind words

chiselled in stone,

one neat rectangular plot

of nicely manicured lawn.

My walks take me very different places these days. But I've always enjoyed walking in cemeteries, and have been fascinated not only by epitaphs – with their tantalizing, but inscrutably brief, words – but also by the beauty of weathered stone. Granite may age so slowly it seems permanent (and marble, that much quicker); but still eventually topples, its inscription erased and sculpted edges softened.

Someone was recently speaking about his concern that walking his dogs in a cemetery might be seen as disrespectful, even though he assiduously picked-up after them and kept to the marked paths. I can't see anything more suitable. Because life goes on. Because the dead should not be consigned to oblivion, but rather should co-exist with the living. And because bodies return to the earth, where their matter is eventually resurrected. A cemetery that is full of life, where people want to visit, and that provides succour and respite, is not an irreverent trampling, but rather a testament to the dead. I would want to be buried in such a place, instead of some austere, empty, restricted space that was itself a morbid metaphor for death.

I'm not sure I'm doing a very good job with my own hyphen. But what a telling symbol this standard inscription is: how little two dates separated by a hyphen conveys of a life; and how sobering a message as to how soon we are forgotten, how small our petty lives in the grand scheme of things. And perhaps that it's more important to live well than to live long.

Here's a little about my process in coming up with his poem. I went to the internet to find synonyms for “headstone”. I have a weakness for this in my poetry: lists that not only drive home a point, but play with the sound and rhythm of words, as well as the nuance and variety of the English language. These are lists that by all rights should be too long and wordy and repetitive for poetry, but that I find a pleasure to both read and write. When I found “footstone”, I immediately lit up to the possibilities. The central part of the poem, about the hyphen, came from a podcast (as ideas often do!): the second episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, in which the economist Steven Levitt interviews the actor and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik. The dog walker was also inspired by a podcast. I've been greatly enjoying listening to old episodes of Judge John Hodgman, and in the “docket” section of this one, he was asked to adjudicate this listener's dilemma. Whatever the alchemy is by which poems begin, this – combined with my own enjoyment of spending time in cemeteries – is how this one came to be.

Although my wish is not to be buried in a cemetery at all. I'd much prefer a natural burial: no embalming; a simple biodegradable container; and my body placed near the foot of a beautiful tree somewhere in a remote forest. And if I'm dug up by animals and eaten, so be it. I don't understand the reverence for a soulless body. Once we're gone, we're gone: our bodies are merely lifeless decomposing meat, not us.