Gray matter

In Competition No. 2938, to mark the tercentenary of Thomas Gray’s birth, you were invited to submit an ‘Elegy on a Country Churchyard’ written in the metre of his famous and enduringly popular poem. Every-one was a winner this week, but frustratingly we have room for only six. Those printed below take £25. The bonus fiver is Chris O’Carroll’s.
 

Time was these mossy stones drew reverent throngs
As Sundays called the village to this place,
But years have hushed our common prayers and songs.
We thrive now on a different brand of grace.
 
Jazz concerts in this yard have we convened,
And readings by the poets of the shire,
About whose verses this much we have gleaned:
Few know of them and fewer still admire.
 
The ladies of our garden club, without
Their clothing, but discreetly screened by flowers,
Have done that calendar you’ve heard about,
Big seller in the gift shop. Check our hours.
 
Our website is the envy (deadly sin)
Of all who work ye olde nostalgia zone.
We’re finding ways to pull the punters in,
And Melancholy marks me for her own.
Chris O’Carroll
 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep
beneath this heaving, mould’ring turf, says Gray:
for them no more their busy housewives keep
their hearths and homes, for here is where they stay.
 
For them, these men whom Fame and Fortune failed
to lionise — the guiltless Cromwells, mute
inglorious Miltons, heroes who prevailed
against their tyrant fields, without repute
 
beyond their quaint community — we spare
some sympathy. We contemplate their graves.
We offer up this elegy. We care.
But what about those housewives, eh? Those slaves
 
who paced from laundry tubs to birthing beds
and back, whom Fame chose also to condemn
to unsung deeds and never-laurelled heads?
Not even Gray can spare a thought for them.
Julie Steiner
 
A Planning Notice on our churchyard gate
Proclaims the end of God in Speckley Down,
His plot now destined for a tarmacked fate
As link-road for the motorway to town.
 
Soon men will come to move these lichened stones
And then in high-viz jackets dig our dead
To sacrifice the sanctity of bones
For faster trips to Sainsbury’s instead.