BROMPTON CEMETERY

i
White in the anguish of their desolate acres,
	the yardstones of the dead
shine on the land like everlasting breakers;
	and the sunlight flickers
over the willow of the angel's head
	to the tin wreaths and the gilding
and the sad memory of flowers enfolding
	bone and bronze and bed.

Over the natural dust of man's dishonour,
	small calvaries of the grave,
angel and crucifix mourned alike with mourner
	later or sooner
hang towards darkness like a powerless wave.
	Living and faith and hoping:
empty, deferred, and crowned with thorns of weeping,
themselves they cannot save.

Six feet dark in the earth's organ-breathing,
	all waves abate:
glory and lack and the cut grin of loathing
	lie down and wait for nothing,
and grow so small they do not know they wait.
	Sudden and long is the mourning
for the prodigal of love returning:
	he returns too late.


ii
Gold hearts of sunlight on the Thames
repeat the stone and filigree,
keep Gaudy for their death in flames
the many-backed and blazing sea;
gardens of silences bequeath
their coloured carillons to the air:
and summer is a painted wreath
above an infinite despair.

Dance heart and flower while you may;
the earth you spread gallanted once:
much has been paid and is to pay
for generations of the dance.
A garden is a widowed grief
and every grief a vase of bells
and every bell a human life
and every life a wave that falls.


iii
When funeral ink is faded; when
grief comes like bills; and when the brave
imperfect flesh, its beauty gone,
grows dry and little in the grave:
Will one pathetic bone beneath
its dumb and windless cloak of lead
believe that death is always death,
and know the pity of the dead?

What leman in your linen form
will shiver at the hunter's foot?
What lover's hollow in the arm
be full again where you are not?
The thoughts you thought eternal, and
your bodies' endless reckless need,
are a scar in wasted ground,
and know the pity of the dead.

Because we set our joy behind
a bastion of delights and vows,
now there are days of naked wind
and comfort failing in no house.
The common smile, the ticking phrase
so often sad so often said,
sign you like portraits: leave us these,
and know the pity of the dead.