I See People In The Grave Poem by Garry Stanton

I keep seeing
people in their graves.
Not people who are already
dead,
but living people,
with whom I daily brush shoulders,
or talk to, or simply see in the
commuter rush, pen in mouth,
crosswording,
or making
Important Mobile Calls
of whose every detail
we travellers must all be aware.

A strange thing indeed.

All your Taj Mahals, great democracies,
Art, engineering wonders,
penicillin and religion
all lie there, in the dirt, with them.

I see them, now, with all
their ambition and drive and
purpose. And no matter how
impressive they may be,
I keep seeing them,
lying in their graves.
They are, specifically, either
bones or dust, but mostly they have
that laughing rictus grin of the recent
or well-preserved skeleton.

They, I, we do it for our families,
so we can perpetuate this system, so
our offspring can do the same, and end up,
dead,
and being thought about by poets with
nothing better
to do with their lives, than wax
nihilistically.