A friend took me over to the Stark Cemetery this past fall. She is an admirer of Caleb Stark and the Stark Clan, who were so prominent in New Hampshire. Warriors and politicians, they are buried here.
My friend is wistful about Caleb, and says he is a man she wishes she could have married.
New Boston is Stark Country. Stark Highway, the Molly Stark cannon, pressed into use for old time’s sake every Fourth of July in the town.
I am more interested in the headstones , carved so gracefully, and surrounded by silence and tall pines Here are the photos. I took.
On an evening in 1977, Robert Lowell, a sick and troubled man died from a heart attack while sitting in a taxi. As disturbed as he was with years of madness and with a life in and out of mental hospitals, with a trail of personal wreckage left behind, he was one of the world’s great poets, I believe he was the last great American poet.
These are the last stanzas of his poem “Winter In Dunbarton”. I believe he is speaking of his ancestral burial grounds at the Stark Cemetery.
“Into this eldest of the seasons. Cold
Snaps the bronze toes and fingers of the Christ
My father fetched from Florence ,and the dead
Chatters to nothing in the thankless ground
His father screwed from Charlie Stark and sold
To the selectmen. Cold has cramped his head
Against his heart. My father’s stone is crowned
With snowflakes and the bronze-age shards of Christ”.
Gardening On Granite 