Whispers Beyond the Grave
By John Herlihy

My heart is struck with awe
As the hammer strikes metal with a gong.
Terror reverberates, intermingled with birdsong.
My heart aches with rare emotions by what I saw.
A chillness pervades the tree-shaded, reclusive yard;
Tombstones resemble lonely sentinels that stand guard.
The tombs and solitary graves of death look stark and cold;
Recalling ancient lives now sleeping, no longer young or old.
Rank weeds and grasses now cover the earth’s heaving breast,
Under which lie dead bodies that once lived at God’s behest.
The wicked have ceased their troubling and the weary are at rest,
In dark retreats, now hearth and home, as the body’s final nest.

The black pupil of my eyes reflect sorrow;
One person gives up the ghost, another lives until tomorrow.
The moon casts long shadows from the tombs to the ground;
A cruel remembrance in commemoration of a life unwound.
Tombstones are crowded together to accommodate he who dies;
The place is hallowed ground under the watch of celestial skies.
Listen carefully and you will hear whispers beyond the grave;
The dead tucked underground and laid out in a hollow cave.
Written words identify the diseased as Mister John Doe;
Written within lies a script marked by lamentation and woe,
Sepulchral inscriptions not found in the nave of a church.
Time has now run out; there is no longer a need to search.

In ceremony they walked thru the valley of death,
Fingering a scroll with deeds done under the patronage of Seth.
Beyond lay subterranean precincts as their final place of repose,
To sleep at least until the Day of Judgment in an everlasting doze.
In these wasted regions of oblivion blew dusty banners in the wind,
Not even solitude dare intrude upon such who on earth had sinned.
The vaulted tombs congregated in crowded numbers nearby the pews,
Where they once sat in rapt attention to the preacher’s oratorical views.
Hundreds of perished souls had fallen into the yawn of death’s door,
With no sense of what awaited them as an accounting in their store.
Antiquated inscriptions lent a calligraphy of letters no longer read,
Beneath lay the vile bodies of the princes of Egypt and Israel instead.

The scene displays an impressive majesty,
Evocative of emotions that come to the surface with intensity.
A graveyard must be sober to suggest an ambiance most heavy;
A silence reigns supreme among lost souls once filled with levity.
Death wears a cloak that reminds humanity of facts elemental;
The effect would be destroyed by an ambience more ornamental.
Below the roof of Heaven lies the sad record of human mortality;
Stern lessons taught reminding us of the nothingness of humanity.
Vain pleasures extinguished, mournful sorrows no longer preserved;
Heaven and hell are full of souls who received what they deserved.
The graveyard will forever remind us of the transitory quality of life;
The cruel world continues to live on in all its bitterness and strife.