My mournful soul, you, sorrowing <br />For all my friends around, <br />You have become the burial vault <br />Of all those hounded down. <br /> <br />Devoting to their memory <br />A verse, embalming them, <br />In torment, broken, lovingly <br />Lamenting over them, <br /> <br />In this our mean and selfish time, <br />For conscience and for quest <br />You stand-a columbarium <br />To lay their souls to rest. <br /> <br />The sum of all their agonies <br />Has bowed you to the ground. <br />You smell of dust, of death's decay, <br />Of morgue and burial mound. <br /> <br />My beggarly, dejected soul, <br />You heard and saw your fill; <br />Remembered all and mixed it well, <br />And ground it like a mill. <br /> <br />Continue pounding and compound <br />All that I witnessed here <br />To graveyard compost, as you did <br />For almost forty years.<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/soul-41/
