This is called Graveyard by the Sea.
The only setting, which I think it's in the poem,
is that I find this graveyard, or the speaker of the poem
finds a graveyard by the sea somewhere.
And in one gravestone is a cross.
But the cross is made out of mirror, shards of mirror.
And there's also other pieces of mirror
embedded in the tombstone.
Graveyard by the Sea.
I wonder if they sleep better here,
so close to the elemental pentameter of the sea which
comes in incessantly.
Just a few square acres of sand, studded mainly
with thick posts, as if the coffins beneath
were boats tied fast to prevent further drift.
I have stumbled around one pre-dawn, just a dog following
the footprints of another dog with me,
and stop before one particular grave,
a cross inlaid with large splinters of mirror.
Whoever lies here is distinguished, certainly,
but I wonder, why mirrors?
For signaling?
Who?
No.
They're embedded in the stone, and so can't
be flipped to reflect the sun or moonlight.
Is the sleeper here unusually vain, and the glass
set for those times of dark ascension
to smooth the death gown, to apply a little lipstick
to the white worms of the lips?
[LAUGHTER]
No, again.
I think they're for me.
And for the ones who come like me at this hour in this half
light, the ones who come half drunk, half wild, and wholly in
fear.
So we may gaze into the ghosts of our own faces,
and be touched by this chill of all chills,
and then go home alive to sleep the sleep of the awake.