So many grains, so many little tombs
of dust. It keeps us humble: the deceased,
always slightly larger than their time,
larger than us, no less, just as a breeze

is larger than the cloud that blows it. More
stars in the sky than granules on the shore.
I believe that, as I believe no one here
would count it out, counting on it rather

the way the sand counts on a gravity
to pull it, to drain the thread, its current
to the earth. So many grains, so many
friends now gone the way of the moment,

of the age that bore them, the one they bore.
Which is to see our past as large, blessed
to have such giants in it, such wind to bear
their loss, to stretch our sails like blown glass.