Grief at Funerals

On Friday the teenage daughter of the man being buried was hysterical at his graveside. It is much less common than one might imagine; common English grief is simply less visible. I've continued pastoral contacts with all three recent Funerals including a cot death and a suicide so the amount of visible and invisible raw grief is more than at the front of my mind at the moment. It is difficult paying attention to much else.

So here is the Pieta (Mary with the dead Jesus in her lap) from above the entrance to Glentham Parish Church taken when it was one of the West Lindsey churches open last month. Some old Pieta have a doll size Jesus more like a Nativity. But this one has the full force of the broken adult body sprawled across a mother's lap (as does the one on the Font at Bag Enderby which Simon Jenkins says it is 'worth crossing Lincolnshire to see').

And here is the only Villanelle I've been able to write. I can't remember what feature of the particular Funeral undermined me. Part of the point is (I'm sorry to labour it in an introduction but many readers of the poem thus far have needed this hint) the idea that one is 'safe inside' rather than 'all at sea' is the wrong way around; being 'caught' is being finally safe if one is taking the risk of being 'out'.

Caught out at a Funeral
at Grimsby Crematorium

The rough raucous cry
of the gull inland
swooping and riding
a harsh grating call
is laughter when thrown
across sea and sand.

The screech in my ears
pounds blood as I stand
as curtains glide round
the bier and the pall:
the rough raucous cry
of the gull inland.

Noone who stands there
suspects I’m unmanned;
suspects what I’m too
far in to recall
is the laughter thrown
across sea and sand;

suspects there are things
no soul can withstand
(abuse, blight and chance;
traps dug for us all;
the rough raucous cry
of the gull inland);

suspects only then
can we understand
what seeds itself there,,
albeit so small,
brings laughter when thrown
across sea and sand;

suspects we each need
a free empty hand
by which to be caught
as we laugh and fall.
The rough raucous cry
of the gull inland
is laughter when thrown
across sea and sand.