A Pilgrimage

May we remember to visit our dead,

that we won’t stop knowing them.

May we remember our place,

finding theirs.

Romantics, they say, have a reality problem

but I don’t know what it is. Maybe the dead 

will have some ideas.

Mortality is such a threat to continuity

––at least of culture, at least of certain

things we used to know,

they say.

***

Inspired by William Goodwin’s Essay on Sepulchres (1809).