The Widener Burying-Ground

JOHN HOLLANDER The Widener Burying-Ground In spite of all the learned have said, We hear the voices of the dead. Not scholiasts who like Burke and Hare Turn dead leaves in the living air, Unlock the Essay and exhume Philosophy from its dry tomb, Nor wise embalmers of the text In humble buckram or perplexed, Carved, interlaced half-calf, who come To show how gold they are, and dumbWe strike from silent lines a fire. Troped sea-shell, loud Aeolian liar, Nymph-haunted cave and mountain-peak Choir with voices that we seek As, scholars of one candle-end, We hear the hush of dusk descend. We unfired vessels of the day, Built of a soft, unechoing clay, Grow obdurate of ear at night When images of voice are bright: The dreamingale, the waterlark, Within the present, silent dark Echo the burden (on these stairs Mistranslated) the singer bears He who packs, with a glowing faith, In that portmanteau, fame and death. Our marginalia all insist - Beating the page as with a fist Against a silent headstone - that The dead whom we are shouting at, Though silent to us now, have spoken Through us, their stony stillness broken By our outcry (we are the dead Resounding voices in our stead) Until they strike in us, once more, Whispers of their receding shore, And Reason's self must bend the ear To echoes and allusions here. ...