Someday I’ll peel away this skin
And slip into the sod,
I’ll make amends to kith and kin,
And then my peace with God.
Then when I lie beneath the earth
A soul of simple mien,
I’ll patiently wait for second birth
To up my soul again.
And if I may, but one request
Then I shall never complain:
When you lay me down to rest,
Rest me on the plain.
Let the prairie grass alone
Upon my sacred mound,
So when the spirit-wind has blown
My soul can hear its sound.
My soul will hear its sound and sigh,
Expirate, if you will,
Appear a little sapling high
Upon that self-same hill.
And if the heavens will me there,
And if I’m saved from fire,
Where should I yearn but every year
To inch a heaven higher?
No longer lost in doubts and dreams,
And nothing to defend,
I’ll simply be the thing I seem,
At once my means and end.
Roads to me will lose their way
And vanish in the grass,
None will be around to say,
‘And then it came to pass
That the human density
Had winnowed down to nil,
But here we have immensity
Upon our self-same hill.
Always out and always home,
How good it is to be
Unjustified and all alone
With no one left to please!’
No, there is not anyone
To tell my story to,
Now the endless days have come
To fill my leaves with dew.
