Oh glorious, silver orb, your beams drip deep through the dank damp earth until they reach me here in my resting place. I feel your energy down in the base of my bones and I claw through the clay for my monthly delight.
Rising above the earth I am free again. Through the silvery haze I float past amorous couples clinging to each other, hollowed eyes rapt in ecstasy, throats rattling with desire. Don’t fear my love, I ache for thee and we will be together again just as soon as I find you.
I drift past the tumbled-down stones and amorphous mounds, garden-beds silvery under the moonlight and head towards our favourite trysting place.
Oh, delightful Delia, how we caused a stir, me Protestant and you Catholic, but what are these labels to us now?
There it is – through the bracken and brambles ‘neath the weeping willow. I can’t wait to feel your slender bones, your eyes so full of death.
But where are you?
You are always here first, full moon after full moon, two hundred years – the steadiest couple in the burial ground.
Oh, Delia, where art thou?
A raven flies across the moon. Aye, something is afoot! Delia, where are you?
I float past the domos of the dead, couples laughing at me as I pass – Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jew. Lovers all, couples, triples and more, but where is my Delia?
I’m now in the new lawn section, near the potted ash-plants and rows of agapanthus. I hear your gentle sighs. Oh Delia, here I am, I am coming for you.
I find you in a freshly dug grave in the arms of someone fresh. He still has flesh on his bones. What devilishness is this? Delia, my love, how could you abandon me so?
You look up at me with your grinning skull and say to me: “Get a life.”
