ELEGY 7051999

I wrote this poem for a friend on the 7th of May 1999, the day of his beloved mother's funeral and burial at their farm on the outskirts of Lusaka. It was a Friday, there was a large throng of mourners, and the weather was fine...

ELEGY 7051999

Here in nature's temple,
Amid the wind-ruffled leaves;
And beneath the crestfallen boughs
of the trees.

Here in a marble casket,
Awash in a gentle breeze;
Amid the bereft, the dutiful and
the ill at ease.

Here in this eternal moment,
This emotion, this grief, this loss, afreeze;
This pain and sorrow that neither time nor distance
can appease.