Word: churchyards
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Yellow Earth. At 4 in the afternoon, six young pallbearers lifted the open coffin with white linen slings and carried it the half-mile to the village churchyard where Russia's endless war is fought even in death-some graves bear tombstones with crosses; others are surmounted by Communism's red stars. Panting and perspiring, the pallbearers deposited the coffin on the mound of freshly dug yellowish earth beside the open grave, within sight of the blue onion domes of the Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration. Several weeping women bent over to kiss the lifeless countenance...
...Ireland, a big Alitalia airliner took off from Shannon Airport, outbound for New York, reached an altitude of 300 feet, then unaccountably veered off to the left and crashed. The fuselage of the big Italian DC-7 ripped through a country churchyard and a flock of sheep, leaving a mile-long trail of bodies, tombstones and burning debris. Said the Rev. Thomas Comerford, pastor of the church: "People were screaming, sheep were crying, and dogs were barking. It was like a scene from hell." Of 52 aboard, 30 were killed, and many of the 22 survivors were critically burned...
Some in the village wanted to erect a plaque in the churchyard to their distant benefactors, financed by the first $40 from everyone's dividend check. Later they decided that $8 a head should be plenty. Other villagers argued that instead they should rename the village Saturno. "It's a great honor" said one, adding slyly: "And it costs nothing...
...verse is filled with an engaging shorthand of brand names -Austin cars, Craven A cigarettes, Heinz's Ketchup, Post Toasties. In one poem he used the names of real people to ironic effect ("T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells and Edith Sitwell lie in Mell-stock Churchyard now"), but added the thoughtful note: "The names are put in not out of malice or satire but merely for their euphony...
When a Communist dies in Italy's heavily Red region of Emilia, the funeral cortege, decked out with red banners, slogan-bearing streamers and a brass band, looks like a political rally. Prohibited by law from parading across holy ground, the procession stops at the churchyard fence-but not necessarily the propaganda. Not long ago the priest of Ruina Ferrarese (pop. 800) found that at least one gravestone in the cemetery behind his tiny church was decorated not with a cross but with hammer and sickle...