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.