NWP Whodunit teachers' writing from 20.1.2018 visit to Westminster Abbey (see blog)
In Balgay Cemetery
I stand in silence
stare at stone
remember
leave.
What is the purpose
to visit
dust ashes?
I reach out,
touch
grey weathered marble:
rain and sleet
have been your tears,
not mine
as you have passed
beyond my ken.
In Westminster Abbey
the past is caged,
enthroned.
Grey marble
shapes orb, crown;
lion couchant
rest your feet.
But here, too,
bone is dust;
marbled skin a thin veneer
between death and here.
************************************************************************************************************************
Emily.
This is not my place
May the wind blow my voice away,
Sending all the words for love and suffering
To all four corners and beyond
To dance feverishly upon the world.
The layers of frost settle
By morning, sinking down
Into my body
Under the earth.
The branches’ fingertips held in pause
As the tread of your shoes
And the swish of your skirts approaches.
Bonded by the muddy track you trace,
Body and mind ranging freely in abandon,
Fierce libertine, you never allowed Man
To draw your limits, you never
Played them at their games
But reached out of the grave
Past what is already here
In the hope that these eternal thoughts
Would keep you from lying down forever.
The stone of your early death,
So definite
No resistance.
It had seemed that you stared Death in the face most nights,
Or at least some unearthly demon.
Still, the Abbey sleepers lie,
Prone, without breath.
And the branches may
One day break through,
The rain seep in
And this noble mausoleum’s glorified
Will begin to lose their mortal sheen.
As the stone erodes, cracks
And the woodwork’s split, stained
And the breeze breathes through
The lungs of the cloisters
There may we see you,
Passing through
But, Emily, you are not here.
You never were.
Alison Jermak
I stand in silence
stare at stone
remember
leave.
What is the purpose
to visit
dust ashes?
I reach out,
touch
grey weathered marble:
rain and sleet
have been your tears,
not mine
as you have passed
beyond my ken.
In Westminster Abbey
the past is caged,
enthroned.
Grey marble
shapes orb, crown;
lion couchant
rest your feet.
But here, too,
bone is dust;
marbled skin a thin veneer
between death and here.
************************************************************************************************************************
Emily.
This is not my place
May the wind blow my voice away,
Sending all the words for love and suffering
To all four corners and beyond
To dance feverishly upon the world.
The layers of frost settle
By morning, sinking down
Into my body
Under the earth.
The branches’ fingertips held in pause
As the tread of your shoes
And the swish of your skirts approaches.
Bonded by the muddy track you trace,
Body and mind ranging freely in abandon,
Fierce libertine, you never allowed Man
To draw your limits, you never
Played them at their games
But reached out of the grave
Past what is already here
In the hope that these eternal thoughts
Would keep you from lying down forever.
The stone of your early death,
So definite
No resistance.
It had seemed that you stared Death in the face most nights,
Or at least some unearthly demon.
Still, the Abbey sleepers lie,
Prone, without breath.
And the branches may
One day break through,
The rain seep in
And this noble mausoleum’s glorified
Will begin to lose their mortal sheen.
As the stone erodes, cracks
And the woodwork’s split, stained
And the breeze breathes through
The lungs of the cloisters
There may we see you,
Passing through
But, Emily, you are not here.
You never were.
Alison Jermak