Two Poems
Memorials
Something in these slabs does not quite answer.
‘Beloved Husbands’ and ‘Beloved Wives’
chiselled in stone, overlooked by angel wings,
seek to commemorate lives shared, with bliss
the elexir of all their days. This is
not what ephemeral records show –
their silences, rejections and the blows,
the loving husband’s dalliance, cards or drink,
the wife neglected, beaten if she thinks
to gainsay the Master of the House. Ask how
can such belovedness be buried here
interred alongside poverty, despair,
the loneliness that the ill-married share,
save that to the dead we must defer? These
grounds are no Elysian fields, rather
testaments to conflicts, tears and wounds,
till Death at last sets the survivor free,
but, visiting again in time unites -
the victor and the vanquished once more One.
Hired hands cut their pretences into stone.
After Six Days
Now lies her little casket in the ground,
six handswidths small, a hand for each brief day.
Six days their daughter’s gaze outshone their dawn.
Now is her mother’s life too short to mourn
her passing? Shall six days be her reward,
the Seventh to be given to her Lord?
Was it for this her mother lent her life
whose love will not now watch her flesh grow tall,
play with her puppy, knit a dolly’s shawl,
kiss ribboned letters, give her heart in thrall?
She learned the comfort of her mother’s breast.
She learned her fist could clutch her father’s thumb.
How could she know she gave more than she took?
How could she know they’d hardly bear to look
now on her pale, still face? Their tears nail down
the casket lid. Their grief might crack her stone.
Her life is ended here. Here two deaths start.
What else is there left now to break their hearts?
