Cemetery
Appears in 6 songs
“And the old widow goes to the stone every day”
The stone is a tombstone, and the widow's daily visit establishes the cemetery as a central setting. Uncle Jerry reads 'my house of stone' as a grave, connecting it to Emily Dickinson's 'Because I could not stop for Death' where death pauses at 'a house that seemed a swelling of the ground.' The cemetery is where the living and dead lovers continue their relationship.
“You dug me out of my grave and Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia”
The grave represents the speaker's prior state of emotional death, paralleling the graveyard scene in Hamlet Act 5 where Hamlet and Laertes fight over Ophelia's grave. Being dug out of the grave represents romantic resurrection.
“Two graves, one gun”
The death of both parties in the relationship, whoever they were before is now dead and buried. The one gun signifies a single bad moment or action that killed them both.
“Still alive, killing time at the cemetery Never quite buried”
The cemetery represents the relationship's liminal state, not fully alive, not fully dead. The love is on the brink of death but 'never quite buried,' connecting to the speaker's inability to lay the old love to rest.
“Take me to the Lakes, where all the poets went to die”
The poets going to the lakes to die is both literal, Wordsworth and Dorothy are buried there, Hartley Coleridge died there, and figurative, representing the lakes as a final resting place for artists who chose nature over the modern world.
“When my depression works the graveyard shift”
The graveyard shift places depression in the landscape of death, the depression works among the dead, surrounded by graves, making it a death-adjacent state.