An Unknowable Language
Visiting the Graveyard
by Mary Oliver, from Red Bird
When I think of death
it is a bright enough city,
and every year more faces there
are familiar
but not a single one
notices me,
though I long for it,
and when they talk together,
which they do
very quietly,
it's an unknowable language—
I can catch the tone
but understand not a single word—
and when I open my eyes
there's the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
There are the stones.
