It takes time and focus to make your way

around this star-studded necropolis.

Without a convenient plan or a guide

– pedantic, wry, and always affable –

you'll wander in vain its endless pathways.

Unable to spot the names you’ve heard of,

you will feel deceived and none the wiser.

 

Lured by bones, or the dubious remains

of two mythic lovers, what do we seek

before a monument built long after

their passion was spent? For who now recalls

the scholar and the edifice he built;

or the bright girl who honed his thought

but had to share in his calamities?

 

All they’ve bequeathed is names and a story

when others have left us paintings and plays,

recordings, scores, verses, novels, or framed

laws that others live by. So when, at least,

minds can reach us, why do we feel the need

each year – couples, hand in hand, family groups,

coachloads – to peer through growth for chiselled stones.

 

Randomness is all it spells – that slow creep

of graves – and, on days your thoughts are sombre,

a few trite lessons: how even in death

the rich still lord it in their mausoleums,

each generation housed imposingly

along prestigious avenues with space

booked for those who, each day, increase their hoard.

 

No eloquent poet, no dead master,

appears here between the trees to greet you

and lead you around in ordered circles

where penalties always mirror the crime.

The sins of some here are known, indulged now

by a different age with different values –

whose adulation sees beyond their flaws.

 

Whatever they drank, smoked, or may have pumped

into their world-weary veins, it matters

little now to the fans who love their work,

however they cheated or got their kicks.

Though sectioned off for his own protection,

The Lizard King lies in state, accepting

tributes: the chewing gum stuck to his tree.

 

The Sparrow’s voice still resonates beyond

each tragic circumstance, her bourgeois slab

supplied by one who, those years she suffered,

had no gift that healed her. Abandoning

his wit, the martyred poet and author

of a play called Salomé lies at last

with his love and lipsticked flocks of kisses.