Elegy
FOR HARRIET TUBMAN & FREDRICK DOUGLASS
Elegy - form Summary
Burial as Source of Growth
Framed explicitly as an elegy, the poem uses the speaker's literal lying in a grave to transform mourning into a scene of ongoing life. Death becomes a productive, nurturing space: worms and roots connect the buried body to the growth of children and future generations. The elegiac voice emphasizes continuity and sacrifice rather than only loss, turning burial into a metaphor for legacy and the necessary sustenance of those who come after.
Read Complete AnalysesI lie down in my grave and watch my children grow Proud blooms above the weeds of death. Their petals wave and still nobody knows the soft black dirt that is my winding sheet. The worms, my friends, yet tunnel holes in bones and through those apertures I see the rain. The sunfelt warmth now jabs within my space and brings me roots of my children born. Their seeds must fall and press beneath this earth, and find me where I wait. My only need to fertilize their birth. I lie down in my grave and watch my children grow.
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