“What is the end of Fame ? ’tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper :
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour ;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their ‘midnight taper’,
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture and worse bust”.
(Lord Byron “Growing Old”, http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Byron/growing_old.htm).
“Hello?”
I halted my walk through All Saints Churchyard and turned enquiringly in the direction of the voice. The speaker, having caught my attention continued thus,
“Why are these leaning? The stones I mean”, he said.
“I don’t know” I replied, continuing on my way home.
Perhaps my response to the above question was a little terse. However I was unsure as to why a total stranger should accost me with such a peculiar question and I had no wish to stand around debating matters about which I knew little, in a churchyard as evening fell. Afterwards however I began to ponder on this strange question. My pondering did not revolve around why gravestones lean (I assume that over time they tend to tilt). Rather my thoughts centred around the people residing under said stones. When one is dead surely one has no interest in whether the stone above your head is dead straight or leaning like a man who has just consumed 10 pints of strong beer? The sleepers in that quiet earth will, I assume rest with the same repose irrespective of whether the stone above their head tilts or stands straight as a die?
The incident brought to mind the closing lines of Brontae’s Wuthering Heights,
“I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: on middle one grey, and half buried in the heath; Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s still bare.
I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”.
Sounds painful to hear.
The dying year.
Leaves turn from green to brown.
His growing frown.
Death patiently waits,
As time, with gnarled fingers reaches for the gate.
A book of poems upon his grave
Could not the poet save.
The few his words touched
Failed to keep him from the dust.
Let us watch the sunbeams on the walls
Your hand held fast in mine as evening falls.
The day has been long
Our race it is run
Let us go down with the setting sun
Me, answering my mobile, “Hello”.
Automated female voice, “Our records indicate you may have been involved in a non fatal accident in the last 12 months”.
Now what would be the point of calling someone who had been involved in a fatal accident? Surely a psychic rather than mundane telephony would be in order when contacting a person who had shuffled off this mortal coil? I wonder whether the people behind this annoying cold calling operation are aware of the idiocy of the above automated announcement? I somehow doubt that those running the company in question are going to set the commercial world alight with their intellect …
Kevin
Saturday morning.
The sun is hot.
Children kick a ball on the school playing fields, their animated voices filling the mid morning air.
A dog barks.
I enter the graveyard, it’s stones marking my way home.
Spring. Early morning. Not particularly chilly.
A fox’s bark cold and sharp.
A shiver runs through me.
I seek the warm sanctuary of my bed.
Bending, I trace the weathered stone resting peacefully in the grass. Being blind I know not who slumbers below, but hope they sleep well.
Birds sing. My dog investigates the plants growing in and around the grave, his warm head finds my hand, looking for an answer, “why have we stopped so close to home?” he seems to ask.
Turning, I run my hands over the rough bark of a huge tree. I notice a split in the midst of this mighty oak. Slowly the tree is dying. It won’t go soon unless storm uproots it but, in time the split will deepen, church wardens will consult. Perhaps staves will be employed to support the tree or, maybe a few blows of the woodman’s axe will bring it down for the safety of the community.
Intellectually I know death will one day find me but, standing here I feel no fear, only a curiosity about this place.
In honour of National Poetry Month I am reproducing below “To His Coy Mistress” by the English poet, Andrew Marvell
“Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run”.
K Morris - Poet 