The inhabitants of this cemetery are forgotten. I have watched once
the burying of a young child. Every day for a fortnight afterward I
came back, and I saw the mother of the child there. She came and
stood by the small new grave. After a few days more she stopped
coming.
I knew the woman and went to her house to see her. She was beginning
to forget the child. She was beginning to take up again the thread
of her life where she had let it go. The thread of her life is
involved in the divorces and fights of her neighbors.
Out in the warped graveyard her child is forgotten. And presently
the wooden headstone will begin to decay. But the worms will not
forget their part. They have eaten the small body by now, and
enjoyed it. Always worms enjoy a body to eat.
And also the Devil rejoiced.
And I rejoiced with the Devil.
They are more pitiable, I insist, than I and my sand and
barrenness--the mother whose life is involved in divorces and
fights, and the worms eating at the child’s body, and the wooden
headstone which will presently decay.
And so the Devil and I rejoice.
But no matter how ferociously pitiable is the dried-up graveyard,
the sand and barrenness and the sluggish little stream have their
own persistent individual damnation. The world is at least so
constructed that its treasures may be damned each in a different
manner and degree.