Like an amusement park, the cemetery grounds are divided into themes. Gardens of Memory, Babyland, Slumberland look out over the valley where palms punctuate the smog, standing on one leg like molting, Disney waterbirds. Turned to stone, Norman Rockwell kids snuggle each other in the Great Mausoleum on an overstuffed marble armchair, while in the main hall the curtain is pulled electronically to display da Vinci's @3Last Supper@1 remade in stained glass. A recorded voice speaks to rows of folding chairs, to silence as, in the stillness, sun moves along marble thighs of @3Playboy@1 nymphs in the nude who cavort and weep along the dim hallways of the dead. Under the vaulting mimicry of this Gothic attic, or outside among immigrations of Italian cypress, the American dead reside in subdivisions, their respectability established by cloned guardian angels - Michelangelo's @3David@1 and @3The Little Mermaid@1 in this park whose theme is death and reproduction. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...APOLLO AT LAX by KAREN SWENSON A TOAST TO OUR NATIVE LAND by ROBERT BRIDGES (1858-1941) AD LESBIAM by GAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS SONNET by DAVID HARTLEY COLERIDGE THE BELFRY PIGEON by NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS |