I followed the leaf-strewn path once more
Where it hugged the cemetery wall,
And made my way through the sandstone gap
Where the howl of the wind was stalled,
While snow still covered the sacred ground
And piled by each headstone lay,
Obscured the lettering, so profound
Of a love, now taken away.
And some of the headstones, cracked and worn
Cried out in their pure neglect,
Where were the ones their love had sworn
Who’d never visited yet?
But then a headstone, polished and new
With a name fresh cut in the stone,
I knelt in awe as my wonder grew
That beauty returned to bone.
My tears were frozen on either cheek,
The frost on my forehead lay,
If she could see from her reverie
She’d see that my face was grey,
But nothing stirred on that tiny mound
That covered her form below,
The wind that howled was the only sound
And I thought it told me to go.
‘Get up and leave, you can only grieve
In this garden of dead desire,
Love in this place may only deceive
It’s as dead as the ash in a fire.’
Sadly I placed the poem I wrote
For the girl, in case she’d need it,
Under a rock by the headstone there
In the hopes that Death might read it.
David Lewis Paget