MEMORIAL TO MY MOTHER

Posted by Admin on 22 February 2009, 12:00 am

She died at forty-six.
I had no marble kerb
or chiselled granite set
to mark her grave – no words
engraved to indicate
the bond her death had cut
some one and sixty years
ago.
But now to compensate
for careless disregard,
the thoughtlessness of youth,
I shall engage forthwith
the services of Art,
and have her portrait done
in oils – a picture that
will show her dressed
in true Edwardian style,
her chosen violets
a posy at her waist.
(Her sun its zenith reached
ere George and Mary reigned –
the short and tragic thread
of Lachesis by then
not fully spun.)
Thus, in a medium
superior to all
funereal kinds,
I shall repay her love –
immortalise her face,
that all posterity
may say “How beautiful
she was!”