The Beresford Monuments Poem by Martin Ward

The Beresford Monuments
(St. Edmund's Church, Fenny Bentley, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire)

Stone shrouds
tied top and tail.

Parents sleep together
with twenty one tiny cocoons.

Dust hangs
in light
as it has hung
through time.

Cold marble
and pink translucent flesh
touch.

DNA
marks this place
of sense and senseless dust.

I did not know them
until now.

They lay beneath
and I beyond
the alabaster
TARDIS.

We orbit the sun,
frozen in time.

Molecules from the big bang.

When the lychgate catch
clicks shut,
they shall remain.

Living now
beyond these graves
that hold, yet cannot
keep them dead.

Flesh
once cushioned love,
goes on.