Headstones once as white as the bones they name
grow intolerant of their grey-green lichen life
and the stains of weather-washed lettering paint.
Humiliated by grubbiness,
many stones have chosen to end it all.
Their broken remains lie as a testament to their shame.
Mary's gorgeous legs of marble
stand next to her separated torso
and a pretty head that rolled a pace away.
Baby Christ never woke within her cradling arms.
He smiles asleep.
O Mother, blessed be, you kept him safe.
In street-side lawns
evergreen trees glorify the immortality of souls.
Yet inside the cemetery's low-slung mossy boundary all trees weep.
Their skeletal limbs and decomposed leaves
sigh "we are sorry".
Sparrows pecking worms hear their whispers and ask
who it was that planted deciduous trees in a graveyard.
An eight-sided chapel, too small for human use,
stands glum and locked with a giant's padlock.
Spiders' webs, birds' nests and fresh white paint hold together
this café for lonely spectres. It's far cosier than the two or
three rotting concrete crypts
with doors of paint-peeling steel and scratched graffiti
that look like bank vaults
or solitary confinement cells.