a walk through the graveyard

now as the cold november wind

sweeps against the matted hills,

i walk where the crackling weathers shake

the many birds, the manifold leaves

and try to find a thing that grieves 

to hear the cloth of snow come on,

to hear the panting, boneless step

of death that waits to take the world--

and learn how nothing, nothing cares.

to the tree, the river, the dreamless hill

that have spilled their seed and fruit away,

death is the brimming of the cup,

time's simple and most natural close.

though it is easier not to dream,

to bother as the hard years fall,

to take no friend or hope or brother,

how we will know that we have lived

in a world apart from leaves and wind?

the rich who give their days to toys,

the proud who cannot learn to break

the greedy with no hearts at all

will win the tinsels of the earth

and rot in tunnels soft as snow

those alone, who took the chance 

and practiced love, and dared despair,

will never fall from the shapes of grace;

those alone, who came to care 

the way it was with other lives,

have struggled above rock and beast,

have set their grain against the rst,

and, beautiful as trees still green,

argue the winter of this place

-a much younger mary oliver wrote this