I stand alone at the end of the pit.

Below me eighteen man-sized boxes

Cover the deep bottom. A name-plate glint

Runs in a line of eighteen spots

Into the shadow. Shovel-dirt piled

Along two sides keeps people away.

A woman and man stare at the fifteenth,

Count from the end, stare, keep counting.

They were all built the same, none small.

What is there that people do in eighteens?

Sing, eat, sit in a bus, march in threes.

I could die, but eighteen is too many.

Forty thousand is incomprehensible,

Or thirty or sixty-five thousand deaths,

Or one death. But eighteen is too many.

Dying would be singular, my mouth shut,

My hands folded, my heart stopped, one box

To cover with the graveside grief.

But this-we might as well all jump in,

Be the dead and the dirt and the desolate,

No name, and rain level the mound.

This rain would end, this place turn away

As earth turns, rain fall on it again

Somewhere. I walk away. It rains.