Funerary Minimums
The cemetery’s too egalitarian these days,
Nobody is building family tombs –
Just rows and rows of polished slabs which rigidly obey
All the ordinances for their little room.
Terraces of back-to-backs, each equal to its peers,
With nothing special here to mark our way,
Where ordinary folk have come to wile away the years,
And once they’ve settled-in, they’re here to stay.
The cemetery’s far too lacking temples, forts, and caves –
We need some wider plots and grander stones –
But not for just the wealthy to enrich their flashy graves,
While we others cram in boxes full of bones.
We need some council monuments, apartment blocks for all,
Where we lie down with our neighbours, mixed and matched.
To give some more variety for those beyond the pall,
Who have spent their lives in communes, not detached.
That’s right, I spelled ‘wile away’ without the H. It was deliberate, to enrage the pedants with my cunning whiles.
Rhyming Couplets 