Here dead clay used to lie

As a Norwegian I did not grow up with Halloween as anything noteworthy. Occasionally, there was a service at my local church for All Hallows, and of course there was the infrequent exposure to the American way of celebrating Halloween. We did have a similar tradition when I grew up, but that was on New Year's Eve, and it was shielded from the commercialisation Halloween has succumbed to. Because of this, I'm not very big on the whole Halloween hullaballoo, and it is with sadness I watch the spectacle rising to American standards here in Norway.

However, since I'm too busy to write blogposts of any length, and since I try to keep this thing updated at least four times a month, I will here present a poem of my own making, whose subject is not inappropriate on this day.

Memento te Moriturum Esse

Yorkshire Museum Gardens

Now here the caskets lie above

The earth where they belong

And now a pigeon, not a dove,

Performs its choral song.

Mute are the bells, the walls are torn,

Long gone that mortal clay,

Likewise the world where it was born

Is long dispersed away.

Here crafted stone still gaping yawn,

Here dead clay used to lie

And from these mouths there comes at dawn
A whisper: man must die.