Cold...
Cold stone. Grey. Green.
Flaked, pitted, and old.
Is this, you could ask,
as good as it gets?
Some had egos as massive
as their memorial,
others had little,
but their stonework came
only from copious amounts
of sweat and labour -
often leaking from blackened skin,
deep, deep,
underground in the coalmines
of this South Wales.

In the cold daylight
of my maternal homeland -
where the sun is quite
accustomed to being wrapped
in soft grey mist -
damp fittingly settled
from the moist air
so that everything was dipped
into it's chilling juice.
We stood side by side,
in Risca Graveyard,
not in memory, but in respect.
In fact, I'm not actually
certain about the 'respect' -
it was more with some
kind of reverential pity.

Some of those around us
had memorials evidently as big
as their declared egos:
Huge marble and granite
edifices arising from
the unkempt earth,
teetering upward
at various angles, and
bearing somewhat pretentious
worldly claims within
their chiseled epitaphs.
One of these monsters,
so completely covered
in a tangle of obliterating ivy,
towered above us and sent
a cold thrill through our bodies.
Had some divine wish
resulted in it alone having had
it's shape disguised and
it's identifying scripts
buried beneath the tangle of
an appropriately parasitical plant?

Other, more meagre, reminders
of long since departed loved ones,
were evidently built from
the blood, sweat, and tears
of patrons who had themselves
long since made the final journey.

The wet grass an uninviting
cushion for our city shoes,
lay uncut, untrimmed,
uncultivated, and uncared for.
Rather than tread upon
its messy glistened carpet,
we trod instead only upon
the straight and narrow pathways
that traversed this haven of death.
In consequence, perhaps,
we left in splendid isolation
some who had hoped for fame
and popularity even in this place.

There was at that time,
one small, newish, shiny black
marble plaque. Simple and plain;
small but neatly carved it bore
the family's surname - 'Strange',
and I knew with certainty that
hereabout lay a sprinking of ash
that was the last vestige
of a departed relative.
How close a relative
I wouldn't know... nor did I
really want to know...
for there was a much more
down-to-earth, less ethereal,
reason for my visit: The yellow tape.

Yellow tape, more garish than sunlight,
more tainting that the unkempt grass.
More defiling than the choking ivy,
more out of place impossible to be...
Placed by people obsessed with
their officialdom teflon pants,
their desire to remain in office,
in power, in control even of
the remains of the dead.
Yet ultimately destined to rest
their own bones in just a place
like this - Risca graveyard.
'Not in my graveyard' I can hear them say
as chalky skeletons bearing
allegiance to some dead
political party on the other side of the veil...
but with voices silenced
by the muffling earth...
and their God's great divide.

A simple sign on the gate
might have said, 'you enter here
at your own risk, some gravestones
may be dangerous'... but no,
defile, defile, defile
by bureaucratic idiocy...
every single gravestone
warapped in yellow tape,
and the result there for everyone to see -
a grave lack of empathy.


© griffonner 2023