Highgate Cemetary - 3pm Poem by willow moon pearce

The citadel of  Victorian death
Monuments sinking or neglected.
Tall grass obscures all but the most ostentatious tomb.
It always says to me sorrow, forgetting and decay.
But in the times of the Victorian attraction and celebration of death.
Coaches with plumed and snorting horses,
Carrying the bereaved, wove their sad journey to a place of silence,
Away from the sun and calm breezes.
Permanence.I reflect on the catacombs below,
Still with the heavy burdens laid over a hundred years ago.
Their resting places still with fragments of cloth and still recognizable
Wreaths on the barred and locked gates, silent with stalagtites of rust. I think back to those years of sorrow and wonder if these families still Exist
10 minutes later I am overlooking the sprawl of London with the noise And traffic.
And try to piece together the two extremes.