In the cemetery
Martin Gertrude Hans and Henry
Not a single cock has crowed today
Cock-a-doodle-doo
Old women
Shuffle past weeping
And handsome donkeys
Bray hee haw and browse on the flowers
From funeral wreaths
It’s All Souls Day
Children and old women
Light candles and tapers
For each catholic grave
The old women’s veils
And heaven’s clouds
Sway like nanny goats’ beards
The air’s trembling with flames and prayers
The cemetery’s a fair garden
Of gray willow and rosemary
We think of them often the friends we’ve buried
You’re so peaceful in this fair graveyard
You beggars who died soused on beer
You blind men sightless as fate
You children who died at your prayers
You’re so peaceful in this fair graveyard
You burgomasters you boatmen
You royal counselors
And you too gypsies who didn’t have papers
Life rots in your guts
The cross sprouts at your feet
The Rhine’s wind hoots along with the owls
It gutters the tapers and the children relight them
And dead leaves
Are strewn across the dead
Dead children sometimes speak with their mother
And dead women sometimes yearn to return
Oh! I don’t want you to leave
This autumn’s filled with severed hands
No no they’re fallen leaves
They’re the dear hands of dead women
They’re your severed hands
We’ve wept so today
With the dead their children and with the old women
Under a sunless sky
In a graveyard filled with flames
Then we turned back into the wind
Chestnuts rolled at our feet
And their husks seemed
Spiny as Madonna’s wounded heart
Though it’s unknown whether her flesh
Was the color of autumn chestnuts
Fir Trees