The Offices of the Dead

Dust floats and turns in shafts of filtered sunlight

as son, grandsons, friends carry in the coffin

of that lovely, gracious woman. Her husband,

now wheelchair-bound, weeps, and is comforted.

The Offices of the Dead begin. Outside

the fields and hedgerows of the parish shimmer.

 

The church door is wide because of the heat.

From my pew I can see through the lychgate

to where the undertaker’s men are chatting.

The hatchback of the hearse is open.

A tractor with a hay baler passes.

 

‘There is a green hill far away’, we sing,

and ‘In England’s green and pleasant land’.

All is movement, and flux – the dead among us

the only stillness.