Under

As the ancestors cannot
Observe, care, or keen for you
From under the earth, from death—

No matter how stridently
You insist yours can, you know
They can, you swear you hear them—

You could keen for them instead.
Play at genealogy
All you like, fill out your trees.

Have you ever tried to guess
How many times the end came,
How many ways they ended?

Remember your grandparents?
Their parents went down to death,
And theirs, theirs, theirs, theirs, theirs, theirs. . .

Send up a cry from this life
You live, for all the dying
Lives that were your ancestors.