Wake

Pitt Rivers Museum 5^th October 2011: A Ghanaian coffin designed to celebrate its owner’s life and ambitions.

Amongst the Victoriana, hieroglyphic tablets ponder,

two exhibited dead eyes that have viewed

a trillion sunrises, with glyphs that silently scream.

Cornered sentinel candles provide

unreflected light. The cloaked over-mantel mirror

fails to reflect parade-ground ladder-backed chairs,

veiled women, frock-coated men, sherry in hand.

Central to the scene, confined, the Ghanaian Grocer

and a coffin decked in the colours of Africa. A casket proclaiming

a life’s work, a toy shop with windows of adverts

for porridge, toothpaste, energy drinks, washing powder and margarine.

A toy shop with a grey corrugated roof.

A toy shop with a full sized occupant.

A toy shop that shrieks vitality and achievement, a biography.

In a hushed atmosphere that rings with muted minted voices,

rested on white ruched silk cushions, the shopkeeper

in a make-believe shop surrounded by Victoriana.

Glasses rested, the reverent middle orders watch as their friend,

their colleague, their peer, is carried to that final rest.