Monday, February 14, 2011

Reminiscing the Fall 2010 Retreat : Part II


This poem is written by Emily Hipps '11.

Runes

The tombstone inscription only discernible

to the limbs of daddy long legs

and illiterate moss.

Josof Bulicek, my best guess

what your name might have been.

I know you lived to seventy-eight.

Was your death slow, creeping,

like the hundred years that stole

the last four letters in your name?

Did those around you sense it coming,

tucking away the intangible parts of you

for safe keeping?

The skeletal facts—name, birthday,

date of death— don’t hold much of you.

You died on 26 January 1916,

but I wonder about the other date,

when the world lost the last person

carrying the fractions of you.

When did the world lose the record

of your favorite shirt, the slant

of your mouth when you were angry,

your opinions of snowy mornings?

Have those bits of you outlasted

the letters in your name?

Who can remember when even stone forgets.



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