Suggestions, to be incised on my gravestone

I have gone. Don’t be vexed.
You mourn, but you may be next.

Move on, enjoy the day.
I’d love to, but I must stay.

You may think I watch you.
I’ve got too much to do.

Come. Sit down. Stay a while.
You can’t tell, but I smile.

I may have left no clue.
Don’t cry. I miss you too.

Like sunlight on the grass,
We move slowly and pass.

Don’t linger. Life is tough.
I’ll see you soon enough.

Publisher’s Announcement

Calculated to reflect the sixty minutes in an hour of heightened imaginative contemplation, the poems in Ernest Hilbert’s first book, Sixty Sonnets, contain memories of violence, historical episodes, humorous reflections, quiet despair, violent discord, public outrage, and private nightmares. A cast of fugitive characters share their desperate lives—failed novelists, forgotten literary critics, cruel husbands, puzzled historians, armed robbers, jobless alcoholics, exasperated girlfriends, high school dropouts, drowned children, and defeated boxers. These characters populate love poems (“My love, we know how species run extinct”), satires (“The way of the human variety, / Not even happy just being happy”), elegies (The cold edge of the world closed on you, kissed / You shut”), and songs of sorrow (“Seasons start slowly. They end that way too”). The original rhyme scheme devised for this sequence—ABCABCDEFDEFGG—allows the author to dust off of the Italian “little song” and Americanize the Elizabethan love poem for the twenty-first century. Speaking at times in propria persona (“We’ll head out, you and me, have a pint”), at times in the voice of both male and female characters (“I’m sorry I left you that day at MoMA”), at times across historical gulfs (“Caesar and Charlemagne, Curie, Capone”), Sixty Sonnets marshals both trivia and tragedy to tell stories of modern America, at last achieving a hard-won sense of careful optimism, observing “the last, noble pull of old ways restored, / Valued and unwanted, admired and ignored.”

Baby if you just say you still care
Follow you most anywhere
Roll away the stone, roll away the stone.

And, in the darkest night,
I’ll keep you safe and all right
Roll away the stone, roll away the stone

Won’t you roll away the stone
Why be cold and so alone?
Won’t you roll away the stone
Don’t you let it die

No matter if fools say we can’t win
I know I’ll fall in love again
Roll away the stone, roll away the stone
So sing – we still got a chance
Baby in love and sweet romance
Roll away the stone, roll away the stone

Won’t you roll away the stone
Why be cold and so alone?
Won’t you roll away the stone
Don’t you let it lie

There’s a rockabilly party on Saturday night
Are you gonna be there
(Well I got my invite)
Gonna bring your records
(Ohh, will do)
Made it!

Won’t you roll away the stone
Why be cold and so alone?
Won’t you roll away the stone
Don’t you let it die
Come on roll
Come on roll, yeah
Come on roll
I want you to roll
Come on….. yeah
Come on roll