Verse
Leedy, David & Niflis, Michael & Scheele, Roy & Porter, Anne
A Federal Sexton Speaks "'Twenty-eight of the national cemeteries are inactive with no space for future burials This well-won grave beside the noisy city embraces a very sleepy young man He...
...These are the poems I'd show you Bat you're no longer alive...
...As a boy I once wondered over a duck noisily nudging her crushed drake to finish crossing a road that runs away to someplace...
...Commonweal: 628...
...To them an unknown soldier, Unknown as the affront was to Mm for which he was hurried off to bed...
...Anne Porter Four Poems in One At six o'clock this morning I saw the rising sun Resting.on the ground like a boulder In the thicket back of the school, A single great ember About the height of a man...
...A Federal Sexton Speaks "'Twenty-eight of the national cemeteries are inactive with no space for future burials This well-won grave beside the noisy city embraces a very sleepy young man He has honored this sinking earth through the zenith of a thousand honking afternoons, Yet these severed roses blush fresh against the mirrored granite and a woman keeps this stone face free from dust, breaking twigs and tearing dusty leaves...
...Only the plastic flowers in their urns Keep up the memory across the years of cuttings in a glass beside the bed, and someone lifted from the pillows there with someone else's hand beneath his head...
...Night has gone like a sickness, The sky is puce and whole...
...We know little We can tell less But one thing I know One thing I can tell I will see you again in Jerusalem Which is of such beauty Ma matter what country you come from You will be more at home there Than ever with father or mother Than even with lover or friead And once we're withtn her borders Death will hunt us in vain...
...2. We've stopped praying, we watch the snow fall, two standing people with a Stellar's jay...
...I hde my face behind creepers that climb a federal crying place...
...but child we see how white it is, no branch to fly to, from, and see it done...
...The cables creaked and shook Lowering the heavy box...
...david Leedy Port Blakely Cemetery 1. No flourish, no wind or sound...
...and child, snow starts in your first hour here...
...The rented artificial grass Still left exposed That gritty gash of earth Yellow and mixed with stones Taking your body That never in this world Will we see again, or touch...
...The children command a kitten on a string...
...Our Lady of Poland spire Is rosy with first light, Starlings above it shatter their dark flock, Notes of the Angelus Leave their great iron cup And slowly, three by three Visit the Polish gardens round about, Dahlias shaggy with frost Sheds with their leaning tools Rosebushes wrapped in burlap Skiffs upside down on trestles Like dishes after supper...
...Changing the Flowers In the newer cemetery, south of town, the markers barely show above the ground— the marble bolsters of eternal sleep...
Vol. 107 • November 1980 • No. 20
