Earlham Cemetery - I have to ask

It seems as though you offer a shortcut

So I meander through your maze of graves

But what I might save in distance of travel

Is paid back with journeys of thought

 

I have to ask…..

 

So, tell me of all of you, who was most mourned?

What were the people at your graveside thinking

As you were lowered into your last resting place?

And is there anyone still doing the remembering?

 

Which of you were serious, who laughed the most?

Whose life was hardest and whose privileged?

Which of you would I have enjoyed spending time with?

And from which of you would I have fled?

 

Now that you’re dead, does a fancy grave matter?

Would you have chosen that spot?

Would you get on with your underground neighbour?

Or turning away in your grave, really not?

 

And if you could see your grave this day?

Would its lichen or lean distress thee?

Would you need your grave to still shout out your name?

Or be content about its dense cloak of ivy?

 

So Susannah Smith, ‘wife of above’

I’ll never know you, we’ll never meet

What were you proud of, did you have shame?

And what was your idea of a treat?

 

And Edward Squire, with all your details eroded

What was the most remarkable thing you did?

And now your life’s over and totally gone

What pertinent advice would you give?

 

And you Googes – Dick, George and Susannah

Is there comfort in being together?

Unlike Robert Nursewigg in his lone grave

Died eighteen ninety-two in November

 

Most graves reduce you to a name and two dates

But a few give away part of your tale

Sophia Watts you left five children to mourn you

Did they stand where I am standing and wail?

 

And poor sisters: Rose and Sophia Smith

Departed this life far too young

A stone covered in verse about sacrifice and rest

Did this really appease the fact that you’d gone?

 

And Thomas and Alice Emma Jeckell

Your canopy of a weeping beech

What was planted first? Your matching graves

Or this drooping, weary symbol of grief?

 

And a wry smile crosses my face as I wonder

Why are so many of you called Mary Ann?

Pooley, Starkey, Miles, of Smiths there are two

And some whose last names have gone

 

Preserved in the neat lines of soldiers’ graves

The discipline and regimentation of war

Your individuality stripped from you in death

Are you happy with this futile collective honour?

 

And the 1910 graves all batched together

Grouped by your year of passing

Might you have known that you were to share

Not just an era but also an area?

 

And how did you die? What was your demise?

An illness or disastrous accident?

What were your thoughts about death when alive?

Was there comfort to be had as you went?

 

Tell me, what would you make of this present day?

What would shock you most?

Technology, globality or attitudes?

Or that we have not achieved more?

 

 

Molly Potter