{"id":931,"date":"2023-04-05T19:24:44","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T23:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/?p=931"},"modified":"2023-04-16T13:44:54","modified_gmt":"2023-04-16T17:44:54","slug":"untitled-by-jay-schroeter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/untitled-by-jay-schroeter\/","title":{"rendered":"Untitled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen you my Friend are passing by<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

An<\/em><\/strong>d this Inform<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 you where I ly<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember you er\u2019e long<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

                                               <\/span>must have<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Like me a Mansion in the Grave\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

              – Tombstone of Dr. John Johnson, 33, Williamstown<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A raven asked me to recall<\/span><\/p>\n

My means to live before my fall<\/span><\/p>\n

But turtle doves care not<\/span><\/p>\n

                                               to sing<\/span><\/p>\n

Of autumn\u2019s storage<\/span>\u2014<\/span>they yearn for spring<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I sought to mend, yet found my blood<\/span><\/p>\n

Beneath this gate of oak and mud<\/span><\/p>\n

As Mother, Father, God<\/span><\/p>\n

                                               and Friend<\/span><\/p>\n

Enwraps my corpse with wounds, His end<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A friend of Abram, kin to Job<\/span><\/p>\n

Recounts redeeming fast and woe<\/span><\/p>\n

For bores from which His pus<\/span><\/p>\n

                                               had gone<\/span><\/p>\n

Now shines, the balm for which we long<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This Hut of Dirt entombs my bones<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet holds them for my hope of thrones<\/span><\/p>\n

Abandoned now as e-<\/span><\/p>\n

                                               very man<\/span><\/p>\n

Forgets himself to crown the Lamb<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I wrote this poem in the fall of 2021 after cleaning graves around All Souls\u2019 Day for a little while with friends, which was cut short by our rags decomposing into worn strips of dirty cloth. I found Dr. John Johnson\u2019s tombstone and was so struck by his epitaph that I took pictures of it and expanded on it to create this poem that evening. (Dr. Johnson, if you\u2019re reading this, I hope you\u2019ll appreciate my stealing your thunder as a form of reflection on the theme wrought on your tombstone.) There are no records of him anywhere (which I could find on the Internet) except the Commonwealth\u2019s record of his death at the age of 33 on May 8, 1782.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t yearn for death. Very few people do. With this poem, I intended to help myself see death as a \u201cgate\u201d into something genuinely worthy of longing, a \u201cMansion in the Grave,\u201d because of the bodily life, suffering, and death of the very Lamb of God. Death, that ugly dirt hut, has been remodeled by Christ the Carpenter! Even as germs and worms chew through our rotting organs, Christian death has become an invitation into a great and eternal adventure! Let us live and die with vigorous joy.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nicolas Jay Schroeter \u201922 majored in Classics and Religion with a concentration in Jewish Studies. He\u2019s a Catholic (convert), a Texan, a vegetarian, and not a blogger. He misses yellow grass and frito chili pie. Racial reparations are necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen you my Friend are passing by And this Inform  you where I ly Remember you er\u2019e long                                                must have Like me a Mansion in the Grave\u201d           … Continue reading “Untitled”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49347],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2006"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":942,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/telos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}