ECHO 18\4\06

Nature abhors a vacuum - principle numero uno

Discovering that Christopher Marlowe is/was(?) buried in the church that I am currently caretaking the vicarage of - St. Nicholas Church, Deptford - the thrill of discovery - that psychogeographic twitch; the tangibility of history - on a fine spring afternoon: I look through the graves and tombs but cannot find his own anywhere - that seems apt; his resting place a mystery - there, the patient gardener bent to the earth, her greying hair belying a youthful generosity and amiable face; a wide smile when I ask about the poet’s burial place - there is only a marble plaque stating in a deep bloody red typeface that he was buried ‘nearby’, his actual grave long vanished, if ever if it was even marked (I suspect not, his homosexuality and the fact that he was a spy for Sir Thomas Walsingham and thereby QE1, would probably dictate that his was an anonymous burial) - his mother and father were poor inhabitants of Canterbury and probably learnt of his death some time after the event - I wonder who may have been present at his burial? If anyone at all. The woman seems pleased to discuss such things, pleased to have a moments distraction and to be able to stand upright and ease the ache in her lower spine - she has been weeding and tilling enthusiastically for a couple of hours (her devotion) amid the almost wordless tombs and stones so old they have been weathered to bone themselves - carefully considered planting has given this churchyard a balance of the wild and the mannered, it is quite beautiful today, burgeoning in April -

I spy a walnut shell, well one half, evidently split open for the prize within then discarded by a squirrel or enterprising bird - perfect half exposed to the day, upright toward the sun, partially hidden at the base of a Hawthorn bush - pale against the soil, the locking interlaced fibres within that held the kernel clear to see; a heart shaped opening, a gestation, a warm orifice (Kit’s emblem of love?) -

The gardener warns me not to believe too much in the books and the myths - “no one will ever know” - a fleeting thought as I look at her: perhaps she is closer to Marlowe than any academic or novelist has ever been? After all she tills the soil, maybe she has actually tilled and touched the soil where his body once lay, maybe some part (art?) of him has suffused and she is his (unknowing?) protector, guardian - I detect a subtext: ‘leave well alone’ -

Familiars: a white cat slouches beyond the wall; a blackbird stands still, immobile it would seem, almost challenging