Poem for 1/26/22 - Walking in Mt. Auburn Cemetery by Richard Fein

I officiated at a funeral this morning at Mount Auburn Cemetery. In my preoccupation with the eulogy and other preparations, I neglected to choose a poem for today's blog. Upon returning home, I found a book of poetry by my friend Richard J. Fein, My Hands Remember, that I had put next to my computer last night, intending to choose a poem. As if by some mystical coincidence, this poem's title appeared in the Table of Contents...

Walking in Mt. Auburn Cemetery by Richard Fein (from My Hands Remember)

1

"You know David Ferry, don't you?"

my wife called ahead to me. I stopped,

turned fearful, yelled back my apotro-

paic fact, "I saw him two days ago

in the Translation Seminar:" Back

at the recess where she waited,

I saw a gray oval stone lipped

just above the ground

and read what the mason incised:

David Ferry

1924-

Anne Ferry

1930-

Those gravid incompletions

roused the stone for me. I bent

and palmed the smooth hue.

Suddenly, I felt embarrassed,

as if I had intruded on an intimate moment.

Two boulders at the head of the plot,

like ocean liners anchored close

to one another near their home port,

formed a channel between themselves.

2

"Well, we meet again," Anne Ferry greets me

as I sit down next to her at Adams House

to hear David read from his new Virgil.

Never going over the top of his lines, but

submitting to them, his voice, in congress

with the words, is delivered clear through

to the end-Orpheus in grief. Severed.

April, 2005