On Hart Island
"The Potters Field on Hart Island shall be under control of Department of Correction, and the burial of deceased paupers therein shall continue.... "
from the Official Directory of the City of New York
i
Island of corpses made
Eight hundred thousand here are laid
Packed in boxes, stacked three deep;
They lived in crowds, in crowds they sleep.
Ten days on marble slabs they lie
Then come unclaimed, the City's dregs,
To rest with stillborns, arms, and legs
Underneath the sod and sky.
Stillborns, limbs, the named, the partly named,
The named, the maimed, the lamed,
The never-lived, the dead:
All rest together head to head
Bunched beneath the weedy plots,
Each plot some fifty bodies long.
Six hundred thousand strong
The island rots.
ii
Eight hundred thousand buried (here,
Eight hundred corpses one grave share,
Stuffed between the marker stones,
Stones chiseled by the hands of men,
Time chiseled by the hands of men
That in due time shall crumble under stones,
And stones shall crumble,
All shall tumble,
All the island tumble
To the waves,
Waves that wash the graves
And lick the jumbled bones.
Then, my living, loving, sinning, dying son,
Then (he dead shall rise,
Licked from earth by wave's salt tongue
And in one gladdening, saddening swirl shall fall;
All are dust and dust shall fall,
Dust from dust absurdly taken,
Filtered by the sea's fine comb.
Eight hundred thousand dead shall rise,
Eight hundred thousand shall forsake the tomb:
The dead shall waken.
iii
The island is a pretty place
What with sun and sand, sea and sky:
Far over water white gulls fly;
Ripples slap the shore's rock face.
Why not wake the dead
That they may see a cloud?
Wake the overused, the incomplete,
The unresisting dead:
Tear off the sheet;
Unwind the shroud;
Pry up the lid
That they may taste the lilting air.
No. No. The dead don't care;
Underneath the dead have hid.
Eight hundred thousand dead don't care.
No? Then go.
Quick. Leave.
The dead won't grieve.
So leave the wilting dead
And live.
Stanley Warren
March 30,1967
October 18,1994,
January 28, 2009 minor revisions.