"To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” Sylvia Plath

A faint whiff of truth pervades
my washed out mourning
on this, your death day.
Those words ‘death day’ terrify me,
make me realise it is the finality
that separates life from death.
You and I have known each other
for nigh on 60 years, two working
class boys walking into the posh
Grammar. Terrified of making a mistake.
You translated languages, I wrote poetry,
but no measly words could save you.
from your fall under a train, at Holyhead,
the end of the line.
My best friend dead by his own hand.
Your silence enrols my mind on dashes
into the future, more tellingly,
slinking back into the past:
times shared, friendship blossoming.
You knew the names of all the plants and birds
of the Cheshire plain, hedgerows, trees, fields,
You spoke Welsh and German and Swedish
But there was no remedy in any language. 
No pair of humans can attend each other’s funeral. 
Nothing lasts.
I arrive back in the present discomforted,
Dishevelled, palpitating; telling you
how furious I am at your final deed. 
Grief doesn’t relieve me 
of all the burdens of managing
the present emptiness:
dispersing perspiration,
spreading sweat,
whimpering and silences
pass me by
But why? Oh why? 
I seek answers in vain.
Nothing will ever be the same, again.