(for my friend Chris)

This rose for all the world
for you
These tears for all the dead,
Those empty words of morningtide
This ever-present dread.

Those cloying smells of perfume
on the dresses of the rich,
This workman stumbling homeward
his body in a ditch.

September’s moon still shining
on this old planet’s doom,
Her wind and tide conspiring,
a chill invades the room.