Graves Have Memories Too

Once I paused, with my dusty feet Braving the heat, to cast a mournful look At the fancy graves along cemetery street; The erect old brown stones too are hard to overlook; They must be fine places of rest, perhaps, Or mere monuments in memory of fallen hopes. I cast my eyes upwards, and hearken my ears To the mourning figures descending slowly, Accompanied by grieve and heavy downpour of tears, Bearing with them, the remains of an infant boy Who is kept still and mumchanced by the joyless titan. The mother, crestfallen, mumbles indistinctly: "I'll miss you son". Here today, I walk through slippery slope Through the condensed silence of the graveside Sharing in the moistened mucus from heaven's nose While it mourns the unborn echoes of those inside. They belong to the brave; fallen and forgotten Whose priceless memories cast in our heart heavy burden. How soon these memories fade! They pass in silence and are gone forever. But we, the world, remain and always upgrade; Washing ourselves clean over and over Like pebbles are washed clean on the seashore Or footprints of yesterday by waves of nevermore. The inn that sheltered the journeying man At the going down of the sun, No matter how comfortable, is not his destination. They are where memory cannot cheat them again They are now where age does not border them They remember us who remember them.