Burial

by Edna St. Vincent Millay — a poem card from Justes Mots

A starkly imagined meditation on death by drowning and dissolution in the sea. The speaker expresses a preference for the ocean as her final resting place rather than a grave, embracing a vision of being consumed by natural forces. The poem combines morbid imagery with a strange acceptance of mortality.

Mine is a body that should die at sea!
And have for a grave, instead of a grave
Six feet deep and the length of me,
All the water that is under the wave!

And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,
Such as a living man might fear,
And eat me while I am firm and fresh,--…

Themes: sympathy · grief · reflection