IN MEMORIAM

This dreary little memorial garden borders a busy Tesco car park. It is fairly new and perhaps it will improve as plants grow. It commemorates a Wesleyan cemetary dating from the early 1800s that used to be here, but now all the bodies have been moved to other cemeteries in the area to make way for progress!

On a more caring note, here is a poem by Auden (a favourite of mine) to his friend, Louis Macniece. It has been a comfort to me when I have lost friends and perhaps it will be to you. (I made a note of it many years ago, during an time of innocence ignorance before I knew you were supposed to credit the source!)

I wish you hadn't caught that cold,
But the dead we miss are easier to talk to: with those no longer
tensed by problems one cannot feel shy and, anyway
when playing cards or drinking
or pulling faces are out of the question, what else is there to do but to talk to the voices
of conscience they have become?

From now on, as a visitor
your influence is welcome at any time in my ubiety.

Seeing you know our mystery
from the inside and therefore
how much, in our lonely dens, we need the companionship
of our good dead to give us
comfort on our dowly days, when the self is a nonentity
dumped on a mound of nothing,
to break the spell of our self-enchantment, when lip-smacking imps of mawk and hooey
write with us what they will, you won't think me imposing if
I ask you to stay at my elbow
until cocktail time?