Picnic (30.vii.87)

We had a picnic in a graveyard once,
in Kildalkey, County Meath,
a small place.

A graveyard is mighty busy
on a fine Summer Sunday.
You would be amazed.

The clay was visited by sons and daughters,
wives and mothers, husbands, sisters,
and a lover.

The lover was the saddest. Why?
Unlinked, I suppose. Incomplete.
Frustrated of union.

At least, if someone is bone of your bone
and flesh of your flesh,
then death cannot change that.

Forever, they will be related only
in her mind, and she can't be
buried with his people.

Liberty (30.vii.1987)

Solzhenitsyn's Gulag book
has over seventeen hundred pages,
and I would not have him remove one,
but what the man is saying
boils down to something simple, and old:

You can lock men up, and maltreat them,
but there is no way to imprison the spirit.
Unless I imprison myself, I am free.

The Gulag and the Hermitage lie in the same country.
The Hermitage is a Gulag for venal money-grubbers.
The Gulag is an Hermitage for innocent and quiet minds.