On writing a Eulogy in a Churchyard

The fox bench is peopled all hours 
A bag-checking station on the school run 
A loiter-spot for teens, a kickstand for exercisers 
A meet-greet-seat for the yummymummys to gossip at
While they wait out their bawling children

Buses thrum idly on the road as ambulances scream by
The drains -  vault doors on broken hinges -
Shiver their shutting up the building
And then gape a fraction more 
For the next truck to deliver tonnes of closure 

Rabble rousers - the drunks, the foxes
Yowling into the night, dig out each other and the bins
Brief silence takes flight as the green devils are loosed
Screaming indignities at the rising sun and shouting it down at dusk 
The churchyard is unquiet as the grave.

The Author struggles with sleep. I know because I hear Him pacing and yowling and screaming indignities. I became aware of His living arrangements many years ago: whether it’s a question of rent, bad luck or self-sabotage I don’t know, yet He moves from flat to flat, with rooms over main roads, under flightpaths, close to hospitals, with unstable neighbours and generally agitated by noise. Unsurprising when given the theme ‘silence’ that he writes the opposite.

As a piece there is some satisfactory description but overall I’m confused. Puzzling out the green devils as parakeets, I nevertheless suspect some lost meaning in the last line. Presumably ghosts or the past would have been raised in a longer piece, and the church and yard presented either as a quiet sanctuary or bustling community hub.

The Author has since offered an update – patching over the inadequacy of the previous title St Marys Churchyard to explicitly signpost location and provide some reason why the cliche of a quiet grave should be dug up and turned over. The new title, On writing a Eulogy in a Churchyard, perhaps lends itself to Billy Collins altogether wittier examination of Chinese Sung Dynasty poetry. It goes some way to giving giving the last line a semblance of thematic resonance, although I suspect The Author is simply stuck on an idea. To hit upon one of my favourite criticisms, in his Lectures on The Art of Writing, Sir Arthur Quiller Couch offered:

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’

In my estimation The Author has mistaken a lightly-prodded cliché for ‘a piece of exceptionally fine writing’ and then performed somersaults to avoid murdering it.

First draft circa Sep 2024

Rough performance time - 1 minutes, 15

Performed once

Date	Venue
25th Oct 2024	The Cornerhouse, Surbiton