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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE HILL ABOVE THE MINE, by MALCOLM COWLEY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Nobody comes to the graveyard on the hill Last Line: Your white bones drifting like herons across the moon. Subject(s): Cemeteries; Labor & Laborers; Graveyards; Work; Workers | |||
Nobody comes to the graveyard on the hill, ost on the blackened slope above the mine, where coke-oven fumes drift heavily by day and creeping fires at night; nobody stirs ere by the crumbling wall, where headstones loom among the blackberry vines; nobody walks n the blue starlight under the cedar branches twisted and black against the moon, nor speaks except the unquiet company of the dead, and one who calls the roll: "Ezekiel Cowley?" Dead. "Laban and Uriah Evans?" Dead. "Jasper McCullough, your three wives, your thirty children, of whom four bastards?" Dead, all de "Simon Eliot? Sergeant Danny George? Judge Peter and Sarah Ellen Farbaugh?" De sleeping under the brambles in the starlight above the unpainted cabins and the mine. What have you seen, O dead? "We saw our woods butchered, flames curling in the maple tops, white ashes drifting, a railroad in the valley bridging the creek, and mines under the hill. We saw our farms lie fallow and houses grow all summer in the flowerless meadows. Rats all winter gnawed the last husks in the barn. In spring the waters rose, crept through the fields and stripped them bare of soil, while on the hill we waited and stood firm." Wait on, O dead! The waters still shall rise, the hills fold in, the tombs open to heaven, and you shall ride eastward on a rain-wind, spurring the thunder, your white bones drifting like herons across the moon. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER WORKING SIXTY HOURS AGAIN FOR WHAT REASON by HICOK. BOB DAY JOB AND NIGHT JOB by ANDREW HUDGINS BIXBY'S LANDING by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS LINES FROM A PLUTOCRATIC POETASTER TO A DITCH-DIGGER by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS IN CALIFORNIA: MORNING, EVENING, LATE JANUARY by DENISE LEVERTOV |
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