Necropolis

This was the third section I added to a poem called "The Loved Dead." I just realized that it was too vague, and not really connected to the poem, which were memories about one person. This section was a digression, about a completely different "loved dead" and it needs to stand on its own. It starts with a flashback which needed to go into past tense, and now, I think, the poem makes sense. It is gloomy in a Poe-esque kind of way.

In park walk some years ago, 
I came upon your ancestor’s statue,
a Polish emigré who served with General Washington.
He had your face. The bronze
had weathered little. I stood,
and stood, and could not stop looking.
Not acid rain, nor pigeon insult
had weathered it. I had you yet,
and yet had nothing. A few things 
we touched in common, a bowl,
a red-glass pitcher whose breaking
I dreaded to think of. Not one photo.
Who is alive who ever
     saw us together?
What proof but memory,
     a weave of cell and synapse?

In the hard light
of this winter afternoon,
I am cheerful in graveyard
until I see the name
of one of your countrymen.

Sun sulks behind a sudden cloud
and I reel backwards, stumble-stop.
One day I thought that such as you
and I would live-walk the lanes
of all the earth’s graveyards,
our laughter a leaf-pile
against the too-short days.

What now? Amid these tombs and columns,
sphinxes and obelisks, what is there left
but never-ending mourning?

What is there left
except to live on out
our ever-precious moments
in solitary tread, alone,
in their honor, and in their names?

The loved dead 
who never come again
except in shards and glances,
moment of shuddering grief
and the remembering smile,

by what of you, and why, 
am I haunted?