Mathew Brady Arranging the Bodies

By Mary Ruefle b. 1952 Mary Ruefle

On a mountain flat with snow

a blue cloud

paints a last touch of life.

There’s endless harm in trying

a dead body on for size.

The gentleman stands out

in every detail, except color.

He considers his life of a madness

that breaks unexpected

(one boy had a sweetheart

he wore her hair round his finger

it kept it from falling off

with the rest)

or comes also if he composes it

(lift one eye shut, put

rifle butt in the slack jaw

of soldiers decomposing).

He fell in love like a woman

in the folded arms

of a drying sweater:

touched one shoulder

and a whole platoon

was affixed with smiles.

Teeth already loose

falling from their envelopes

thick folded letters

in a dead white mist.

Source: memling’s veil (The University of Alabama Press, 1982)

Biography

Though poet and essayist Mary Ruefle was born outside Pittsburgh, she spent her youth moving around the United States and Europe with her military family.

She has written numerous books of poetry, including Indeed I Was Pleased with the World (2007) and The Adamant (1989), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. A Little White Shadow (2006), her book of erasures—found texts in which all but a few words have been erased from the . . .

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