Country Burial
After the words of the magnificence and doom,
After the vision of the splendor and the fear,
They go out slowly into the flowery meadow,
Carrying the casket, and lay it in the earth
By the grave’s edge. The daisies bend and straighten
Under the trailing skirts, and serious faces
Look with faint relief, and briefly smile.
Into this earth the flesh and wood shall melt
And under these familiar common flowers
Flow through the earth they both have understood
By sight and touch and daily sustenance.
And this is comforting;
For heaven is a blinding radiance where
Leaves are no longer green, nor water wet,
Milk white, soot black, nor winter weather cold,
And the eyeless vision of the Almighty Face
Brings numbness to the untranslatable heart.
Copyright Credit: Janet Lewis, "Country Burial" from Selected Poems of Janet Lewis. Copyright © 2000 by Janet Lewis. Reprinted by permission of Ohio University Press / Swallow Press.
Source: The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis (Ohio University Press, 2000)