THE MARBLE TABLET IN ST DAVID’S CHURCH

It is a crisp winter’s day
Gloomy-grey with a chill wind, snow  is falling.
The dark iron-strapped church door
Beckons me in
With the inexorable pull
Of a black hole in the white space of snow.

A visitor’s book lies on the table
Near the door
Pages damp, yellowed and curled
Two cheap broken biros lie next to it
As though a school child was the last to visit
And indeed a child’s scrawl is the last entry.

I write my name, date and home town
How difficult with the biro – and  how insignificant my name !

I look up – and see the tablet
Clear across the nave, behind the little wooden pulpit
And the name of the respected recipient
who died in 1818.

The marble memorial
Spells it out clear
sharp black lettering on a pure white background
Classical Regency entablature, plain, elegant, dignified
A noble cartouche against the dull lime-washed wall.

But who reads it in this remote and ancient church?
Who comes by?
Who preaches in front of it?
It must have been placed there, behind the pulpit,
because people looking at the preacher
Could not fail to see the plaque behind.

It says:
‘A man who left the area at age 16
Without friends or interest
But with hard work and perseverance
Achieved both.

Was 30 years in the Navy
(and rose to become a captain)
Made 12 voyages to India
And was shipwrecked twice.

He suffered cruelly imprisonment under Sultan Tipoo of Mysore.
He returned to his native land and
Worked to give his land and people the benefits of his wisdom.
He died aged 70
March 1818’.

A good man – whose name cannot be forgotten
as long as the tablet lasts –
And why should it not last?
a thousand more years to come.

I wish also my name in the little damp book
May survive somewhere
May be recorded
By someone
Or placed in a Welsh diocesan archive
As a record of a visitor to St David’s
But it will probably be thrown away and destroyed.

What a contrast –

Two names – of men
Two lives – that lived
Two eras – in history
But unknown until read
By a passer-by, a historian, a preacher or worshipper…

But the names are both recorded
One on stone, one on fragile paper
Separated by a few meters and two hundred years
In St David’s Church
On a cold winter’s day.

C. Tim Taylor 2012