The Grave

I left the horse outside,
For there were no roads in the little graveyard,
No paths,)
Only a disorder of gravestones,
And moss, and ragged grass,
And broken twigs fallen from the trees overhead.
The ground was hummocked and hollowed
Between the gravestones,
And I stumbled among them
Reading the inscriptions
To guide me.
Your monument was to be designed by a great architect
They had told me,
But not yet, although you had been dead four months.

Such things require consideration.
So I went from stone to stone,
Seeking the child's grave
Near which they had laid you.
Suddenly I tripped,
And jerking forward to save myself
On the uneven ground,
I saw in front of me two fruit jars
Leaning crookedly against each other,
And half-full of water foul to the colour of tobacco juice.
They were smeared with the splashings of rain,
And the rims of the covers were red with rust;
In one a leaf was still clinging to a dying stalk,
In the other the stalk was quite dead.
Above them a tablet to a dead child

Was let into a rock.