issue 25 > poetry > bergmann
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In Green-Wood Cemetery
by Meredith Bergmann
They nest among the crockets of the gate
as quietly as gargoyles in a drought.
Still fading from their paradisal-green
transplanted shades, they bring to leaf the stems
of foliated tracery in stone.
Approach, and they’ll begin to hail and flock
from finials to fine old chestnut, oak
and beech. Though inarticulate, their shouts,
urgent as speech, announce their names and plots:
a pandemonium of feral parrots.
All clamor here as best they can. All pets
are left behind. For whom do these infest
this theme park of remaindered sympathies
with raucous exultation, and haunt with cries
and cheers the moving, camouflaging trees?