Metairie Cemetery: New Orleans Poem by Patrick L Kalahar

Death looks down on the walled city
where the rich sleep in little white houses
and the poor sleep in ovens. Small boxes
with iron doors which will bake a master
as well as a slave
and sextons with wooden rakes
will push them out the back when they are done.
The streets are lined with weeping willows
draped in shrouds of Spanish moss.
Buttercups bloom in the cracks and chinks that
time has made a garden.
Mockingbirds sing resignation to all who will listen
and lizards slithering
through decaying tombs feast their ugly souls
on stilled hearts and sightless eyes.
Beneath remorseless sun or pallid moon
the cemetery is filled with the small sounds
of things unseen that whisper corruption
and dissolution

But all is not sullen in Metairie. Cut glass
vases arrayed by every mansion of the dead
throw pieces of light—each facet a sparkling
gem—to shimmer in the sun and dance
on the sepulchers of the dead. Marie Laveau,
the Voodoo Queen of Congo Square, presides
in Metairie in white dress and scarlet tignon
and still appears on All Hallows' Eve, in moon
shine or in shadow, as acolytes all in white
gather goofer dust from the tombs to make
obeah to charm the dead