Neither Dorking nor the Abbey

An imaginative, affectionate elegy for a recently deceased writer that opens with the question of whether his ashes should rest in a village graveyard or in Westminster Abbey. It narrates a small funeral and then shifts into a fanciful vision in which the deceased revives on a nearby hill, greets a host of characters and peers, and is honored in a coronation-like celebration. The piece mixes vivid landscape detail, playful reverie, and respectful remembrance to evoke the writer’s personality and legacy, and it closes with a contemporary poet’s lyrical tribute that affirms the continuing life of his words.