Ocklynge Cemetery

 They'd piled St Mary’s waist deep with their dead

so looked at last for somewhere else instead.

They found a field upon a downland lilt

and sowed their fathers even as they built.

Small men in counting houses held the lease

while burly fellows toiled on Ocklynge Piece.

The Coombe, the dene, the dovecote and the mill - 

each turned six feet, till each plot held its fill.

Fine elms were laid to map the paths ahead,

to shelter stones that shelter Eastbourne’s dead.

Now labour’s done, those trees are fully grown;

their marble’s turning black, their graves unmown

and sunbeams warm the whale-backed downland side

where children play and live and age and die.