In Memory Poem by Bernard Kennedy

Your coffin was carried
slowly through,
the door where, you had stood
many times greeting others.
Now we greeted you,
your remains, for you are gone.
Your friends cried because
it was true,
Goula was dead.

Actress, poet, whom Kennelly
read with joy, a painter,
wife and animal lover.
Leaving food for the fox in winter,
the stray cat through the open
kitchen window comes,
the dog runs to meet his sitter.

Your Civil Defence friends
gathered in honour
and joined your family
and friends for mass,
in your Church of fifty years.


You cannot be forgotten,
your old theatrical way,
picked from Anna, Big Maggie,
Phyllis, adept at directing plays.
Your stage friends.

And you danced the conga,
in the forties, and tangoed
in the fifties, out in Tanganyika,
and courtesy became you,
as you read aloud and
directed speech and bearing.

Now you do not need to dance,
now you do not need to paint,
for what it represents now exists,
for you and Noel.

No, you cannot be forgotten,
for those who, like the merchant
in search of treasure finds the field,
a jewel, from London
is always sought for.