Did you, in your dreams, ever die
then wake unmarked, without a grave?
No epitaph to intimate
how here it was you came to lie;
no comfort left for those who crave
an elegy to know you by.
Think of the anguish you might save
through setting down some stone display.
Take a look inside the lychgate:
tombs arrayed on the moss-grown way.
Diverse in form and what they say,
measure them with an inner eye.
Single tablets are commonplace
and prone to lean without a base,
while wealth proclaims its parting day
with pillar, crypt and vault engraved.
But none quite master of their fate:
the words we choose time will unlace.
iii. 2020
