Eulogy of a Country Churchyard

Sitting snugly on a smooth,soft slope Surveying a stretch of sea eternally still That moment memorialised in my mind As the sun- sinking silence soothes the trees Stand the monuments to shrunken lives. The plots define within strict limits The tales of beings whose remembrance Provides what amounts to no more Than their names ,ranks and serial numbers, Their joys and sorrows only to be surmised. Gloriously the sun bathes the glistening stones Giving them their moment of glory Resting softly upon the chiselled legends And then plunged into the darkness Of the dead of night Until their resurrection with the rising sun.