In a Disused Graveyard
Robert Frost
The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never any more the dead.The verses in it say and say:
‘The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.’So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.
On its face, a poem about death. Maybe more interesting as a poem about how the things we use transform as a reflection on societal changes.
Disused, abandoned, or transformed places - graveyards, churches, amusement parks, office buildings - created to fulfill a specific need and perhaps still clothed in the trappings of that original purpose. Their disuse does not mean that we have have no more need for grief, worship, fun, or work. It just means that we have found different ways to address those needs.
Put differently, the graveyard was never general-purpose coverage of all things related to death or mourning. It was a particular channel to fulfill these needs, driven by the expectations of the society that created it. As society shifts, the graveyard no longer reflects our preferences on mourning. We may no longer be as enticed by the physical representation of death in the headstones. That doesn’t mean we no longer mourn. It just means we mourn in different ways.
But it’s not just places that are waylaid by changing societal expectations. Other grand constructions - software, institutions, even ideologies - can fall victim if they fail to adapt. One could imagine an alternative take on this describing the fall of an empire, its ruins still drawing the living in the form of historians and aficionados, but never any more new citizens. Its codes and laws so sure of its continued existence, because it satisfies the basic needs of its populace - security, maybe even prosperity. Its fall is not to say that we’ve given up all pretense of government and have reverted (or ascended?) to a state of anarchy, though that’s certainly one possibility - as is stopping death forever.
For fun, a significantly cheesier take on software projects. I never claimed to be a poet.
In a Disused Codebase
The developers glance upon its core
To optimize and build their skill
The codebase draws refactors still
But never users any more
Pre-emptively scaled design patterns say
Users who come through ads today
To click and buy and go away
Tomorrow MAUs will come to stay
So sure of conversion the patterns rhyme
Yet metrics show a steep decline
Of MAUs from year to year
When will profits finally appear?
I could create a presentation
For management: a new roadmap
To re-invent, prevent stagnation
We’d get no budget, but they’d clap