To add insult to injury, someone in our century
has kicked over their stone.  It lies pale as moon
in November grass near its jagged marble base
which even a fool or an atheist can tell fits
the uprooted slab exactly.  We try to be precise
even in death, carving the years, the months, 
the days resolutely into stone, this litany of woe
reduced now to numbers because what else
endures beyond the numbers of our days?
Two centuries have turned since these children
sickened and were planted in the poor soil
of memory—first baby Benjamine, then David
who was old enough to feel the grief of Ben
like heavy stones in his pocket, two boys
with their sturdy Biblical names gone before
they could leave a mark on anything, not
the oaks of this hillside, not the scent of corn
steaming, not the voices of the choir lifted
above the dust motes and second-hand sun.
And then, next year, the infant Mary, gone
before she knew anything, who never met
either brother, though David would have seen
the swelling of his mother's belly, and perhaps
counted the months and wondered, as I do,
at the mystery numbers point to and conceal,
the mystery mothers, even today, are unlikely
to speak of to a boy so young, too young to guess
a mother's pangs or flaring joys, too young
to feel the scriptural weight of a virgin name,
or the way days turn to months, then seasons
to the fullness of years if you are lucky,
and not if you are not.  
Lost also now 
are the family name and any news of father, 
mother, other sisters and brothers of the three
marked here—perhaps another stone elsewhere
identifies them?  Someone lived to buy and plant 
this stone in 1896, marking the shared graves
of David and Benjamine, then adding Mary
like a terrible afterthought the next year— 
but then silence, though possibly another
sister survived, who would have felt the silence
like a busy noise in the crow-ridden trees
and rows of corn stubble, leaves falling everywhere
in November wind like the numberless dead
and their names like water on the tongue.