When a man dies and is lowered into the ground

And thus leaves behind all his failings at bed and board,

He achieves something: fleshbound

Was he a lout; bonebound is lord.

The ceremonies are instructive: our double standard

Permits us to dignify process—the sun’s burning,

The moon’s dead whirling, the mountain’s crumbling sand ward—

And meanwhile mock the living, the yet barnstorming.

Yet man without the respect of man when he lives

Comes to but feeble flourishings, war or sonnet.

If the hat comes off after the visitor leaves,

All the world’s grandest mouthings are but ironic.

What he looks for, feels for, fears for, is, does

Must be honored, surely, before his bones, his was.

In books, and in sealed containers at world’s fairs,

Time is reduced to something tasteless and soluble.

Why? When not in capsules it turns hairs,

And bleaches golden words in the mouths of the voluble.

We put up statues and plaques, and deposit regret

At the tombs and shrines of time’s late enthusiasts.

Why? We trust that with gifts we help time forget

Our rickety present for all those marble pasts.

But time does not live for capsules, stones, bones, books.

It breathes even as we, and would be friends.

When we tote pills, do shrines, muster backward looks,

Will it not be offended, question our ends?

—Thus, to dear time I pray, whom I swear to love

Far beyond all that is timeless, below or above.

Again and again we deceive time. We sleep, we meander

As if it were nothing to us when we’d come, or be, through,

Or where, in the limitless world, our ship would founder,

Or do whatever ships in metaphor do.

We wear all the bright fashions, read soft books

And lie in the sun in Nassau with our hides.

We build our castles and line our secretest nooks

With the addresses where passion or drink resides.

And though time is never deceived—it is we, with our slippers on,

Who are caught by surprise when our light verse yawns its last

yawn—

To the last hour we must strive to keep not looking drawn

From lamenting in secret, mumbling dirges at dawn.

It is a game, but a very solemn one, this that we play

With art, drama and rhetoric as we decay.