IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for awhile;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.
If I pass the burial spot of Nero
I shall say to the wind, “Well, well!”—
I who have fiddled in a world on fire,
I who have done so many stunts not worth doing.
I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too.
I want to shake his ghost-hand and say,
“Neither of us died very early, did we?”
And the last sleeping-place of Nebuchadnezzar—
When I arrive there I shall tell the wind:
“You ate grass; I have eaten crow—
Who is better off now or next year?”
Jack Cade, John Brown, Jesse James,
There too I could sit down and stop for awhile.
I think I could tell their headstones:
“God, let me remember all good losers.”
I could ask people to throw ashes on their heads
In the name of that sergeant at Belleau Woods,
Walking into the drumfires, calling his men,
“Come on, you … Do you want to live forever?”
The most famous tomb of Jonah is that in ancient Nineveh (Mosul) in Iraq.
Nero was buried in the Mausoleum of the Domitii Ahenobarbi on the Pincian Hill in Rome.
Nebuchadnezzar's body was exhumed and chopped to pieces not long after his death.
Jack Cade, who led a peasant's revolt in England in 1451, was buried in the graveyard at St Margaret's church.
John Brown, the abolitionist, was buried at his home in New York state, now a national historic site.
Jesse James is now buried in Mt Olivet cemetery.
The sergeant at the battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918 was Marine Corps sergeant Dan Daly.