Olives: Poems

The Cenotaph

35 The Cenotaph First Cemetery of Athens The day I went to the First Cemetery Looking for famous graves, the sky was blue As wild irises in February And there were mourners walking two by two And gravediggers who had folk to bury Along the cypress-vaulted avenue: Priests and florists, all that’s understood In the solemn bustle of death’s livelihood. I came there seeking the adventurer, The poet, the novelist, composer of song, And though I had no map, yet I was sure I’d come upon them if I wandered long Among the plaques and formal portraiture, The rows of marble headstones hundreds strong, Eponymous mausoleums with their claim To immortality, at least in name. Then in the lesser alleys of the dead Among the graven years mumbled with moss, I felt somebody watching and turned my head, And there a small girl stood, as at a loss, And looked at me, as if something I’d read Aloud was too loud, as if she might toss Her curls and put her hands upon her hips, But pressed instead a finger to her lips To say, “Don’t wake them,” and she seemed to smile To find herself and someone else alone Sharing a secret for a little while, 36 Though I could walk away and she was stone. I could not find among the rank and file Among the rude democracy of bone Any of the famous men I sought Although I scanned the legends plot by plot. But I found widows bent over the task Of tending shrines, and women washing the grime Patiently from angels who wore a mask Where acid rain turned marble into lime. A woman stopped me on the path to ask— As someone asks a stranger for the time— Where she could find the Sleeper, to lay a rose Upon that breathless beauty’s long repose. But roaming lost amidst death’s anterooms, I did not find the exile or his bust, Nor the swashbuckling ransacker of tombs Who sifted stories for the golden dust Of kings and queenly ladies at their looms, All that was not devoured by moth or rust; Nor the composer, nor the novelist. The more I looked for them, the more I missed— It was the grave of nobody I sought— It was the purling of the ash-gray dove In cypress boughs, and plastic flowers bought To be the token of undying love Some twenty years ago—they could not rot But faded to a kind of garish mauve Just like the fading afternoon—while I Wandered between two dates, and earth and sky. ...