Lay for the Day 31st July

In the eastern Church, today is the feast day of Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy Jew who begged the body of Jesus from the Roman authorities, providing a new-made tomb for his burial, and the spices for his embalming.

Joseph has a close connection with one of the great centres of Celtic Christianity in the British Isles, Glastonbury Abbey. (In the west his feast used to be celebrated on 17th March, the same day as St Patrick's.) According to one part of the Glastonbury legend, Joseph was a merchant and an uncle of Jesus, who brought his young nephew to Britain on one of his voyages. The Messiah is said to have founded a shrine on the site later occupied by the abbey church, St Mary’s. This is the root of the famous poem by William Blake known as ‘Jerusalem’. Another part of the legend has Joseph returning to Glastonbury after the Crucifixion and bringing with him the relics which are called collectively the Holy Grail – the cup which Jesus shared with the disciples at the Last Supper and the spear which pierced his side on the cross.

Joseph is the patron saint of gravediggers, cemetery keepers, undertakers and all such who deal with the dead.

Nunhead

Where we feed what kills us, the thrush expends his song.

The lettering’s careful, addressed to an absence
that chipped a few words from the hearts that composed them.

In the newest bed of chopped clods the naked sponge
the flowers have fallen off spells DAD and the pine peg
puts him late in the race, nearly fifty thousandth.

A plot of Anzacs, clipped and swept, is kept in line.
Their upright stones, whiter than canvas, state no birth,
cause, nor relations’ thoughts: name and rank, and the date,
ninetten sixteen, seventeen and so on, and on.

In waist-deep grass, past head-high brambles, we stumble
on them. The birch and wild roses strike up through their
shady precincts, where stems lap over Wife of the
and Fell Asleep, Asleep, Sleeping in Jesus turn
to touch drunken heads with Daughter of the Above.

The wealthy for a moment may make us obey,
with their “final and funniest follies”, their pleas
for contemplation, in epitaphs uncomfortable
as this tilted obelisk to all five children
of Mr and Mrs Long, capsized off Worthing –
whose long bones lie with their little ones in their tower.

Black iron torches turned down on the pillars mean
“That which feeds me kills me”. Above, in a circle,
a snake holds its tail, grim sign of the eternal.
Soon they’ll lock the gates and loose the dogs from the lodge,
a cottage-mausoleum, but thereÕs fox-taint still
mingled with the warm humus of English jungle
and a feast of lairs where trees have toppled the tombs.

John Gibbens, from Falling Down

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