Headstones Poem by Michael Cayley

Rows of headstones jostle for air.
The dead are too many:
Copton and Neville, Boulton, Letchley,
the village breathing through the same names
decade after decade, blending the centuries,
and the many more who reach up still
for remembrance though their ages have vanished,
their identity been rubbed out by rain.
They lie together, graves overlapping,
promiscuous, with no regard
for birthdate or gender. Ferrars, Neville,
Letchley and Stainton, keeping their hold
on our attention through weeds and lichen.
Gradually they are being worn down
till a final frost fractures the stone
and their memories crumble,
falling to dandelion and burdock,
but their threat still rises, their pride swells
in humps in the churchyard, and were they to wake
history would give us no quarter.
We, who now trample uncaring,
would find their triumphant multitude
left no space or time
for us to move in. Our breath would not touch
their vacant faces, our reaching hands
would meet with no softness. Copton and Ferrars,
Sibford and Boulton, all the orgying
horde would flatten us, unnoticed,
under yew and cypress in their fleshless dance.