Grave Talk Poem by Jan De Raeymaeker

Don't talk of graves at your tender age

Not until your rickety rack is a trembling wreck
Till your white-film eyes are all but blind
And your toothless head is utterly deaf

Until each day blinks and the world is a ghost
Till you're grimly emaciated, decrepitly thin
Mind overthrown, no recollection of anything

Wait until the wake's wet tears have tried to dry
Till living memory is pickled in uisce beatha
All pain shrieked out to a hellish rattle

Don't talk to me of graves until you're long gone
Till clods are covering your coffin-wearing bones
And a lyre plucked to softly lament your soul

Until the headstone has reached weak anonymity
Till its lichen-eaten rock cracks and drops
Lengths of grass coiling tight in a strangling coif

Don't talk to me of graves at my slender age