Elegy in the Churchyard

a poem by Mary Mathew

I walk through this bare acre of land, alone!
Every nuance of this spacious canvas
Is lush in its portrayal of the stark reality,
The yonder green of the ground losing the battle
To senescence.

Church bells resonate into my being,
It isn’t dark, for the retiring sun
Has a few moments more before setting finally.
The raven soars high above with a raucous trill.
Slicing through the air is a chill
That incises my lungs with each breath,
As it staggers on its way in.

I draw in a sharp, shallow breath,
Taking in streams of air with strained emotion.
I look around for a sign of life.
For something that tells me of its existence,
Something that will scream from its soul,
Its survival.

But the crackling of the fragile twigs
Is the only sound to be heard
Under my gentle, submissive footsteps.
Swooning drops of heated sweat
Flow from my tensed forehead
Like beads of liquefied lead,
Smouldering me with its scorching waters.

A gust of wind brings in a collective odour
Of something burning, a certain smoke,
The source of which puzzles me
As it assails my senses.
In my hand I clasp some tulips,
The ritual act of anyone who comes here.

I have my own visions
Of the hostile hospitality of this place-
Where orphaned flowers grow in silence
With wild waif like weeds,
Where the dust-ridden bodies empathise
With charred souls,
Where the losses in one’s life are at par
With the triumph in death.

The dormancy of my emotions, eruptive
In each step I take forward, towards.
The predestined refuge,
The anointed sanctuary,
An unknown haven-
The tomb in my name!

I kneel down,
And place the tulips against the tombstone
My fingers slowly trace out my name,
Yes it is my name only.
But it is not me.
It is not my body.
It wasn’t my soul
That my dear ones grieved for.

My fogged senses seem to clear
As I understand the magnitude
Of my life to the ones I loved.
All of my grief flows to the ground,
The only moisture soaking this parched Earth…
As I view the dust-filled neglect
On ‘my’ grave.

I close my eyes and lean my head
Against the tombstone.
A huge wave of emotions surges within me
As I try to recollect the past,
The futility of my life
And my love for all of them
Which is now buried
In a grave they have created for me
In my very lifetime.

Rioting throughout my mind
Is the turn of the events
Leading into this moment I face-
The hillside accident months back,
When my car crashed with a tanker truck.
The gasoline leaked from the tanker onto my car,
I couldn’t escape its wrath for I was stuck in my seat.
And then.
There was an explosion.
Everything ended. forever.

It seemed that way to everyone.
They found partial remains
Of a body which was blown to pieces.
It was declared that there were no survivors.
But I survived.
Left again to die once more.

The cemetery breeze rustles my unkempt hair,
Overwhelming me with a certain sensation,
I feel an unseen presence,
It isn’t the demented devil weaving these patterns
Through my cobwebbed mind.
I can almost touch the distorted reality.
It was my equal in pain and in spirit-
A spirit that is overpowering me
With its untold tale of tragedy.

It doesn’t matter who was the unfortunate one,
Who rests here, with my name,
In the plot of land dedicated as my last asylum.
I feel him to be yet another man
Who has lost his identity, his beloved ones,
His last earthly right-
A grave for his peaceful resting,
I ponder with a lump in my throat.

Drenched in the gloom of the evening,
I look at a small group of people nearby, departing.
Again the smoke besets my nostrils.
Jesus! What I condemned as smoke was the pure gift
Thou received from the Magi,
The Frankincense!

I look on in a muted concern,
Bright robes of the vicar glow,
Candles burning brightly on a forlorn tomb,
Yet another burial,
A death of some mortal.
Like ‘me’?!
I say to myself.

I simply don’t know whether to laugh or to cry!