A Walk Through the Graveyard

With love from Megan on this second anniversary of Sue's passing...

A Walk Through the Graveyard
by Mary Oliver

Now as the cold November wind
Sweeps across the matted hills,
I walk where the crackling weathers shake
The many birds, the manifold leaves,
And try to find a thing that grieves
To hear the cloth of snow come on,
To hear the panting, boneless step
Of death that waits to take the world—
And learn how nothing, nothing cares.
To the tree, the river, the dreamless hill
That have spilled their seed and fruit away,
Death is the brimming of the cup,
Time’s simple and most natural close.

Though it is easier not to dream,
to bother as the hard years fall,
To take no friend or hope or brother,
How will we know that we have lived
In a world apart from leaves and wind?
The rich who give their days to toys,
The proud who cannot learn to break,
The greedy with no hearts at all
Will win the tinsels of the earth
And rot in tunnels soft as snow.
Those alone, who took the chance
And practiced love, and dared despair,
Will never fall from shapes of grace;
Those alone, who came to care
The way it was with other lives,
Have struggled above rock and beast,
Have set the grain against the rest,
And, beautiful as trees still green,
Argue the winter of this place.