Ruminations in Wandsworth Cemetery
While we’ve been in lockdown, some of my walks have taken me through Wandsworth Cemetery. (One memorable morning, in thick fog.) On one of these walks I was struck by a mini-epiphany brought on by all those memorials, and over the following weeks put together a little poem around it.
Death is just death.
That’s all it is: no more.
The only way to describe its presence is
To make a list of mournful absences.
No breath. No pulse.
No heat or voice or thought.
It’s nothing but a stop – a dull bookend.
The point on which no other points depend.
Pay it no mind.
This non-event. This halt.
Why do we let our end distract us so?
It’s literally nothing – let it go.
What matters? Life:
The stories that we make.
However hard or heavyweight it looks,
The bookend’s not what matters. It’s the books.