You are a cool cemetery.
You have the sinner’s grave
You have the saint’s earth
colliding
You have all the beds
narrow as a knife;
as if a rally of tombstones to defend death.
But you can’t really postpone
the inauguration of my burial,
can you?

From the poem - Few Words to Cemetery

When Harper was in among the stones she could see brass plaques screwed into the towering pillars of granite. One listed the names of seventeen boys who had died in the mud of eastern France during the First World War. Another listed the names of thirty-four boys who had died on the beaches of western France during the Second. Harper thought all tombstones should be this size, that the small blocks to be found in most graveyards did not even begin to express the sickening enormity of losing a virgin son, thousands of miles away, in the muck and cold. You needed something so big you felt it might topple over and crush you.

My body weeps to live
when you make me believe
that someday I will be dead
soul sleepless in graveyard's bed

He’d seen a lot of bizarre items left at gravesides, like a carton of eggs, a pair of reading glasses, a bag of licorice, smooth stones, a spoon.

If I die today, will you remember me tomorrow?
The love I'm leaving behind, will you care to borrow?
From a snake-shed-skin or from the sky unknown
In all living and the dead I'll dwell to groan

Every known thing used to be unknown
And every rock could become a stone
Someday nature will have to atone
When soul sees dead flesh leaving the bone