May 13, 2006

Accatolico Cemetary


















On my last visit to Rome, I spent over an hour at their Accatolico Cemetary, basically meaning non-Catholic people's cemetary. You could find everything and everyone in there from the poets Keats and Shelley, to India's first ambassador to Italy, Dewan Raam Lall.

As I kept walking through the cemetary, which in itself is a rewarding experience, not only because reminding yourself about mortality is necessary every now and then, but there is also something fascinating about the lives of people and their final resting place where little remains but a name and a stone.

On one tomb of a person named Gregory Corso (1930-2001), the following beautiful words were written:


Spirit
Is life
It flows through
The death of me
Endlessly
Like a river
Unafraid
Of becoming
The sea

In the midst of all the graves, I thought I saw something written in Arabic, and as I came closer, I found this:

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji3oon
"Verily to God we belong and verily to Him is our return"
-The Quran, Chapter 2 Vers 156

10 comments:

Fouad said...

wow.. two entirely different philosophies yet so entirely the same.

BuJ said...

wow.. the indian ambassador bit is interesting but the arabic bit is fascinating!
i wonder who that gentleman is? obviously from his name he was born a christian but perhaps converted along the way before 1996?

i'm going to google him.

allah yirhamo

BuJ said...

I googled, I googled, and then I googled some more, and this is all I could find:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/65bc9/

The pictures look very similar.

The other Nathaniel Hammond is a soldier in the US Army that died in 2005 in Iraq. Obviously not the same guy.

Allah yirhamhom jamee3an.

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Hala fouad! Yeah I know, I found that very thought provoking. Makes you even more convinced that although we may in religion call ourselves by different names, our source is and as initially was, the same.

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Buj, I have been wondering as well who he was...it's really fascinating finding a young man like that there. He died at the young age of 24. All kinds of questions arise, what happened, who was he, what was he doing there, was he born muslim. Etc. That's why I keep visiting cemetaries, especially abroad. It will always leave you with some sort of new information to perhaps colour your senses and ideas a bit.

Yeah the pics look similar indeed. :)

Tainted Female said...

Hummm... SS... I think you've just inspired me to start visiting cemetaries... interesting at least, this one is...

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Happy to inspire :) If you do visit one, perhaps a post and some pics?

Francis S. said...

Gergory Corso is actually a beat poet, friend of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs and Paul Bowles. A very interesting fellow. Apparently, he is buried in that cemetery because he wanted to be buried next to Shelley.

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Hey Francis! Välkommen :)

Thank you for that piece of information. I have wondered who he was, and the words I read on his tomb really struck a cord with me. Glad you stopped by.

Baraka said...

Salaam 'alaykum dear,

I love cemetaries so I really enjoyed this piece! One finds so much profound wisdom distilled from lifetimes, shared essences between religions...and ultimately our shared destination to the grave.

Warmly,
Baraka