In a score of churchyards everywhere, graves
marked by families and friends recall gratitude
in death, or for them, being gone. What lies
beneath are bones, the ungovernable corruption
of the flesh, wood fragments, nails, a chemist’s
stain in the eyeless earth, perhaps a rag of cloth.

Around this church, as far as maybe seen,
these saddened stones stoop with their age,
their messages of hope a whisper from unseen,
their function as a hold upon the living
long erased by other scores of deaths.

Today, the stones have lined the consecrated
ground to form a wall that makes a garden
for the dead. A corner holds small squares,
tin vases, jarred flowers dead and dying,
a card or two in deepest sympathy,
for burials of ash, where modern times
have quickly merged their owner’s solid
flesh with smoke and air. A road runs
past, which, widened to allow the traffic
of Edwardians and their servants, took out
square yards of land and burials. So we may
safely park, secure now in the world to come.

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Ketton

In Poland, refugees find welcome from their land,
their blackened homes are shells where lives once met
and grew together. Thousands have come.
This neighbour does not shell or bomb.
Their greeting Is an open door. Schools open
rooms and classes form, laughter heals the air.

In Britain, families stand by open doors as well.
They register their love and pledge their trust.
Ukrainians see hands that reach to touch
and gather in. But dodging missiles, rockets, are the
visas, declarations, and red tape designed to trap
the foreigner and his wily knives and i.e.ds.
Hundreds lose their way in online sink holes,
Or cannot find the documents they need.

In London, Government has sunk behind its
overweight P.M. His entourage of servants,
sycophants and hacks look forward to their
Covid fines, and breed inaction as the crowds
of victims clamour to come in. They seize
a yacht that Putin’s pal has hidden here,
amongst the other tainted wealth that spread
as party gifts, while families perish in their tents
and cellars, hungry, waiting, empty, cold.