The Writer’s Almanac tells me it’s the birthday of T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot today, Anglicized American poet extraordinaire and writer of what I think I would like on a gravestone if I end up on a ranch and get to be buried there:
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.
(From “Ash Wednesday,” of course.)