Epitaph: The long and short of it
WRITING THE epitaph is a dying art, now just holding on to its original role as a brief formal inscription. There was a time when it was the vogue, when the living went to great lengths to write appropriate words on the headstone of the departed.

There was a time when it became a recognised literary device when writers, mainly poets, prepared epitaph beforehand. As a literary device, it added significant value to the departed.

As usual at this time of the year when we look back, we ought to spare a thought for our literary ancestors who have departed during the month of December. Here I revisit the work of A J Seymour and Martin Carter as we pay tribute to them in their own words, words that could easily be read as their epitaph.

Arthur J Seymour

(January 12, 1914 – December 25, 1989)

And in that deep, last sleep of all,

When I this mortal frame depart,

Help me to answer to Thy call

With Faith’s great light and strength of heart

These are the features – but the light gone out

in the unpeopled chambers of the eyes

Tomorrow belongs to the people.

Death like the prodigal had come home

Oh how the vertebra of life

Crumbles at a touch

When death has knocked at my door

What can a poet hand down?

Poet’s open passport

To immortality.

And then

The table

Slowly contracts again

From time immemorial

To time incomputable

He is no more

He shaped the people’s visions

Eternally within themselves

One day He will withdraw you out of service.

Martin Wilde Carter

(June 7, 1927 – December 13, 1997)

I do not sleep to dream, but dream to change the world.

all are involved

all are consumed!

Out of time I carve a monument.

Death must not find us thinking that we die.

So jail me quickly, clang the illiterate door

If freedom writes no happier alphabet.

And only where our footprints end can tell

whether the journey was an old advance

or a new retreat:

Not in the saying of you, are you said.

Very sudden is the sought conjunction.

The middle where we meet

is not the place to stop.

Every now and then, I think on death and of dying; not something from which to shy away – the thought can be sobering, and may lengthen one’s life and broadens one’s contribution to life.

My epitaph: Semicolon!
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