Litany - Fran Claggett

[Larry Robinson]

Litany 

For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they are dreamed and are dead.
	    from Yeats’ “Easter, 1916”

Enough to know.
They are dreamed.
And are dead.
The litany in my head
Utters their names
One by one. 
Dead. Not dead.
Dreamed.
The beginning. Kneel down
On the cold stone floor.
The stone of the heart recalls first
Her name. Mary. The Grandmother, 
The grandmother from Wales
Whose voice always took me to the lilt 
Of Dylan Thomas.
Then the children: Marietta Walker, 
First child of the young bride. 
Donald, after her husband,
Who worked in the mine.
Carrie. Bill. Sam. Norval. 
The family grew, boys
Following their father 
Into the coal-dark days.
The child Kenneth, 
The only one never to reach adulthood, 
Adored by my mother, Maggie May.
(Maggie May, Margeret, Midge—
Alll names worn by my mother.)
And the youngest: Betty (Mary Elizabeth). 
Elbert. Lucy Florence. Robert. 
Twelve children and never an angry word
From the parents from Wales, from Scotland.
But the names go on. Chidren 
Of their children. Cousins. Brothers.
My knees, on that ancient stone
Known to my memory, have no feeling. 
Only telling. 
The names 
Come faster.  
They are hard to say. 
And now, in silence, 
The stone. My heart. My love.
Say it. 
Enough to know.
Dreamed.
And dead.

		- Fran Claggett 

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