Inter-Textuality in a Rodborough Churchyard

It was the most perfect equinoctial evening,

But with the six o’clock sun in drivers’ eyes,

I decided to walk rather than cycle - for a change,

And chose to walk to Rodborough Church,

Rather than straight up the hill to the common;

I sauntered along Spillmans to reach the church gate,

Where, placed carefully within the clambering ivy,

Was a lost shopping list, a middle class preparation

For a dinner party: precisely categorized calligraphy,

Upper case black ink, detailing the requirements:

APPLES BANANAS TOMATOES AVOCADOS CORIANDER LIMES CELERY SALAD

EGGS BAGELS BREAD WRAPS

COLD CHICKEN MINCE SAUSAGES BACON SMOKED SALMON

YOGHURTS SOUR CREAM then four items I couldn't read shrouded by the branches and leaves of the ivy (Why didn’t I move the branch? I dunno. I think it’s because it felt as though I were regarding an exhibit in a gallery or museum, or perhaps it was the memory of a Christian upbringing …)

MAGAZINES

KiDNEY BEANS

TINNED TOMS

NACHOS

APRICOTS

then another couple of ivy covered items

FROZEN PEAS

Someone had scrawled across this notelet in blue biro,

Poshy doshy – a young hand, condemnatory and judgmental,

Turning the world of class and deference upside down

In an inter-textual, meta-textual sort of way;

It was though Life itself had become the writer

In this churchyard of embedded narratives;

I felt compelled to record this postmodernist happenstance -

So penned these lines, sitting on a gravestone,

In the evening sunshine, imagining

That I would place the scrap of exercise paper

Next to the shopping list in the ivy;

But when I turned the church’s shadowed corner,

I came across this notice:

This is NOT a rubbish bin. Please take all flower wrappings, pots, wreaths and your graveyard rubbish home with you. Thank you

As Louis Armstrong put it in High Society:

'End of story.'