A Private Moment

   The small raised churchyard

   Invites you in up steps

   To its secretive enclave,

   Quiet, privileged, meant for those

   With prestige.

   Inscriptions are lengthy,

   On enduring granites which are

   Still polished up, as if done daily,

   By maids.

   It feels solitary, a discovery,

   But is not.

   I've disturbed a woman

   Studying a tomb slab.

   Chinese, perhaps, she is sturdy

   In her summer dress.

   Irritated, she moves off

   To a stone bench in the shrubbery.

   It does not save her from intrusion.

   A chattering group of men, 

   Asian, middle-aged,

   Wander through with vague interest,

   Then out again.

   I wonder what the people below,

   With their so parochial English names,

   Would make of their visitors today?

  The woman watches me walk away too.

  Good, she clearly thinks!