When I am dead

When I am dead, erect no marble stone
With random clichés writ in gilded font,
But let sweet earth devour my flesh and bone.

My testament is this: I do not want
My lovely life and death to be proclaimed
With random clichés writ in gilded font.

What purpose serves a stone thus cheaply named,
To summarise in bland and hollow words
My lovely life and death? To be proclaimed

A loving husband / father? Do the birds
Attempt, when some poor wretchéd soul keels o’er,
To summarise in bland and hollow words

His time? It means the living evermore
Are bound by guilt to that one maudlin spot.
Attempt, when this poor wretchéd soul keels o’er

And heads off to his chill October plot,
To countenance the grieving souls that none
Are bound by guilt to that one maudlin spot.

Enrich the soil! That’s how things should be done.
And thus I bid you, do not stand and mourn
But countenance the grieving souls that none

Should to that dismal place again be drawn
When I am dead. Erect no marble stone.
And thus I bid you, do not stand and mourn
But let sweet earth devour my flesh and bone.