Graveyard Blues

The majority of “Graveyard Blues” is written in the past tense in which the speaker recalls the memory of burying their mother. The poem begins by describing the weather, which sets the poem’s melancholic mood: “It rained the whole time we were laying her down” (Line 1). Working directly with repetition, “Graveyard Blues” is a circular poem in which words and whole phrases are repeated. For example, in Line 2, the speaker begins the second line with “Rained” (Line 2) reinforcing the hammering effect of the cold, dark, rainy weather that occurred the day they buried their mother. The speaker states, “Rained from the church to the grave” (Line 2), signifying that the rain was consistent, and it walked with the speaker and their mother’s body from the funeral to the graveyard. The poem also repeats the phrase “her down” (Line 1, 2). This end-line repetition is carried throughout the first four stanzas of the poem. Trethewey continues to establish the poem’s mood by ending the first stanza with “The suck of mud at our feet was a hollow sound” (Line 3) and the word “hollow” (Line 3) signifies the emptiness the speaker feels following their mother’s death.

Stanza two continues, reliving the events of the funeral. “When the preacher called out I held up my hand” (Line 4), the speaker states. This line is followed by a line that repeats almost the exact same action: “When he called for a witness I raised my hand” (Line 5). Again, Trethewey repeats keywords and phrases “When,” (Line 4, 5); “called,” (Line 4, 5); “my hand,” (Line 4, 5) to emphasize the speaker’s preoccupation with this memory, which is haunting and ceaseless. The repetition also creates the effect of an echo or a call and response, both of which draw largely on voice and song.

Line 6 is a shift in which the speaker moves away from a literal description of the funeral and into a metaphorical description of what happens to the soul following the body’s death: “Death stops the body’s work, the soul’s a journeyman” (Line 6). While death may kill or lay the body down, the soul is a “journeyman” (Line 6), a term that is often applied to trade or craft workers who have finished their apprenticeship and are considered masters. To call the soul a “journeyman” (Line 6) is to name the soul as ready to continue beyond the body.

Line 7 returns to describing the imagery of the outside world–the weather–which symbolizes what is occurring within the speaker’s self. The line “The sun came out when I turned to walk away” (Line 7) could be read as positive, however, the next line begins with the word “Glared” (Line 8), signifying that the sun is uncomfortably bright as they “turned and walked away” (Line 8) with “[their] back to [their] mother, leaving her where she lay” (Line 9). This stanza uses the same repetition as the previous two stanzas, repeating full phrases in the first and second lines and repeating the end words nearly verbatim. Narratively, the speaker leaves the mother behind in this stanza and there is the feeling of guilt and shame for turning their back on the grave (as symbolized by the sun’s glare).

The penultimate stanza continues the imagery of the outside world the speaker moves through following the funeral. “The road going home was pocked with holes” (Line 10). The road was not flat or smooth, but bumpy and uncomfortable, much like the moments–days, weeks and possibly years–following the death of a parent. The speaker reiterates this in the next line stating, “That home-going road’s always full of holes” (Line 11). There is a slight shift in this line from the phrase “going home” (Line 10) to “home-going” (Line 11), as the speaker is first literally talking about going home after a funeral, and in the next line, referring to the African-American Christian tradition of celebrating someone’s “homegoing,” or return to God. The speaker thus notes that this process of celebrating and saying goodbye to a life is always difficult. The speaker further observes that “Though we slow down, time’s wheel still rolls” (Line 12) which comments both on the slow speed of the vehicle to accommodate the road’s holes, but also symbolizes that even if one tries to slow down to process grief and loss, life continues at its normal speed; there is no slowing downtime and eventually the speaker, too, will be in the ground just as their mother is.

The final stanza takes place back in the graveyard, as the final two lines shift into the present tense. “I wander now among names of the dead” (Line 13), the speaker states. The word “wander” symbolizes an aimlessness that often accompanies loss and grief. The speaker is directionless in their movement, and they are moving “among names of the dead” (Line 13) in the graveyard where the mother is buried. This phrase gives the sense that the speaker is lost in the past–consumed by grief and their mother’s death–and cannot live in the present. The final line solidifies this point in stating “My mother’s name, a stone pillow for my head” (Line 14), giving the reader a picture of the speaker laying on the mother’s grave, resting her head on the gravestone. Having relived the memory of the funeral, the speaker enters the present moment and tries to live with their grief despite their mother’s death as hard and cold as a “stone pillow” (Line 14) with which they must sleep. The mother, who would normally be a comforting presence, is replaced by her name on stone—a “pillow” (Line 14) that gives no comfort whatsoever. Physically, the speaker revisits the gravesite in the present tense; metaphorically, the speaker is forever connected to their mother’s death. It has become a part of them that they will carry as long as they live.