Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PRAIRIE GRAVEYARD, by ANNE MARRIOTT First Line: Wind mutters thinly on the sagging wire Last Line: In the centre of the huge lone land and sky. Subject(s): Cemeteries; Prairies; Graveyards; Plains | ||||||||
Wind mutters thinly on the sagging wire binding the graveyard from the gouged dirt road, bends thick-bristled Russian thistle, sifts listless dust into cracks in hard grey ground. Empty prairie slides away on all sides, rushes toward a wide expressionless horizon, joined to a vast blank sky. Lots near the road are the most expensive where heavy tombstones lurch a fraction tipped by splitting soil. Farther, a row of aimless heaps names weather-worn from tumbled sticks remember now the six thin children of a thin, shiftless home. Hawk, wind-scouring, cuts a pointed shadow on the drab scant grass. Two graves apart by the far fence are suicides, one with a grand defiant tombstone, bruising at the heart "Death is swallowed up in victory." (And may be, God's kindness being more large than man's, to this, who after seven years of drought, burned down his barn, himself hanged in it.) The second, nameless, set around with even care-sought stones (no stones on this section) topped with two plants, hard-dried, in rust-thick jam tins in the caked drab pile. A gopher jumps from a round cave, springs furtively, spurts under fence, is gone. Wind raises dead curls of dust and whines under its harsh breath on the limp dragged wires, then leaves the graveyard stiff with silence, lone in the centre of the huge lone land and sky. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LEFT-HANDED POEM by JAMES GALVIN NO COMPLAINTS; FOR ROBERT GRENIER by ANSELM HOLLO POINT OF ROCKS, TEXAS by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE PRAIRIE HOUSES by BARBARA GUEST AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE PRAIRIES by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT TO MAKE A PRAIRIE by EMILY DICKINSON THE PRAIRIE-GRASS DIVIDING by WALT WHITMAN SYMPHONY OF THE SOIL by EVA K. ANGLESBURG |
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