Alone Among the Graves
No romance today.
The cemetery was deserted,
at the far edge of the tiny village,
shrouded in a fine sultry fog.
Large black trees threw darkened shadows
over the deserted gruesome sepulchers.
Few cared to visit, few cared to tend the tombs.
A large hawthorn hedge, irregularly grown,
surrounded its oblique perimeters.
Cursed, the villagers said
for it never flowered red blooms
during any time of the year.
An old hunchback lived there,
he lived all alone, with no one to care
No one fed him, no one was his friend.
No one knew where he came from,
no one knew his name,
but he loved the lonely forsaken place:
he weeded out the desultory paths,
and cleaned the old dreary tombs,
he planted evergreens and white flowers,
to welcome the damned and the doomed.
Only one woman came to visit,
constantly, rain or shine, every blessed day.
The hunchback would give her a white flower.
And she returned the gesture with a dime.
No word was spoken, nor looks exchanged.
She’d go to a small tomb, presided by a tearful angel.
The grave was covered with a cold white marble slab.
There she’d leave the white flower,
stand for a while in silence till she left,
No tears fell down her wrinkled old face.
The cemetery prevailed in gloom.
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