For Alice Southworth
She is dispersed: the Oxfam shop will have its due And scarves and books pass into strangers' hands; The chairs find homes in unfamiliar corners; Her daughter wears the narrow wedding band. Life flowed away from her quite gently, The breath and the coherence slowly ceased; And yet her presence still surprises, The vividness diminished not the least. Her memories become the stuff of stories And new family and friends ask, 'Is it true?' Fresh links and continuities astound them: Amid the fragments she is shaped anew. The world is always dying and renewing: Let go to make new patterns and new forms. Life moves on, with its never ending growing But quieter, thinner, further all the time. The universe will continue to expand; There are more stars already than the grains of sand.
Kathryn Southworth is the former Vice-Principal of Newman University College, Birmingham. Now retired, she lives in Camden Town, London.