At the Melbourne General Cemetery

Some interesting angels.
At this time of year, cowslips —
watery sculpture of lemon-meets-yellow.
Lichen-crested, old gravestones cluster
near untried slabs, grey scripted with gold.
I walk here to come back to myself…
Today, unhappy beyond knowing much else,
I am grounded by simple acts
of subtraction: contemplate again
how many children have died young;
those thirty-year widowhoods;
a life begun in Canton a long century ago.
There are a few light touches:
a guitar of paper blooms for Elvis,
red bordering white; in veinless marble,
the billiard balls and cue of Walter Lindrum.
Epitaphs graced by kitsch seem fair enough—
death the ultimate test of words.
And of flowers … lily, carnation, marigold
so rarely fresh here, except for those
heaped over the newly dead, or brought with
weekly care till the grave is re-opened.
A little fine rain is chastening enough —
I need not to be shriven by fear of endings,
or so I tell myself: with a childhood shadowed by
crucifixes, skulls stared at by mad saints…
By now I know death as states of suffering
not to be endured, yet endured:
black lakes and seas rowed over
are now a sediment layering the body.
Why blame death if I made a bad bargain with life?
Survivor and witness, I walk the often-turned earth
of this place where cypress and eucalypt
spring up as they can, or will,
against horizons of glass-skinned skyscrapers,
lobelia dream-folds of mountain.
The day's air a cool pressure
to be accepted or denied.