Bewildered, by all the things he left unsaid

Serendipity, chances cut dead:

I am wise enough to play the fool.

This vicious wind of a deep set night

Put out the light and then put out the light

Memory cuts through this taut, damp cold

Slices through me like a knife

Signs hidden by an iron fog suddenly beckon:

A life lived in vain....nothing the same

Across a black hole in time.

I listen to the be-jewelled spider-webbed

Frost-filled graveyard echo

Of yew trees shadowed against the moon.

No trembling now from scattered loons.

Eviscerated by all that time can do to

Human hearts and lips and eyes

Trapped in earth-infected graves

Kissed by the tears of fond remembrance:

Flayed by an ancient consciousness of what is

I stand alone in this freezing unghosted space.

My insides squirming like a snake

As I try to make out the  palimpsest of names and dates:

Unspoken frost-whitened eyes.

Free will or fate – always too early

Or always too late?

Turned away from hearth and home

From the ends of empire,

We came down these unfriendly urban miles

We who were born between Belsen and Napalm

Not to bully or bluster or fawn.

We choose to welcome luck, good or bad;

Refugees welcome too: fathers, mothers, children, 

We choose to seize the beauty of the day

Hold it fast, then, give it clean away....