I knelt in the sepulcher of a man;
His broken coffer wrought of rough-hewed stone
Stood sentinel betwixt a polished span
Of granite, laid bereft and all alone,
And of his name no dint nor breach began,
No epitaph, no garments and no bone,
So that I gazed upon that ancient plan
In askance if he ever called it home?
Above, the twilight stars he might have seen
Look down upon the miracle he made,
And of the earth and sky and all between
No rival kingly stone has yet been laid
To match the beauty of his desert queen,
Wherein still still may rest his mortal shade.

The ocean beckons with its calling,
A siren song from distant shores -
Beguiling me to greet the dawning
Far beyond our uncharted course,
Until old mountains fail below
The lost horizon drowned to view,
And onwards then anon to flow
Up over the waves to ventures new.

The mountain's spine does shiver
At the first kiss of the quake,
And the wayward roving river
Sends a shudder through the lake;
The birth of Spring plays fanfare
To rouse the fledgling flowers;
And thee, embraced, released despair
That trembled from thy towers.

What shook thy strong foundations,
Like a quake unto the mountain?
Were thy wayward contemplations
Like the lake unto a fountain?
As Winter spreads her wedding gown
And the weary flowers wither,
Let thee embrace thy walls of stone
And what peace they may deliver.

She smiled awkwardly, too young to drink,
And I wondered was this her first time,
As her muddled words tumbled out,

    “It’s not bad news.”

She looked at me, half-expectantly,
Like a child on Christmas morning,
And I wondered was she silently
Counting to 8, or 10, or the exact seconds
Some think-tank had determined was
Right, under the circumstances.

    “Do you want to see the body?”

I shook my head, as the image
Of my father, ever a thin man in life,
Sat up on a gurney, bare-chested,
Wired up to bleeping machines,
Flooded my inner eye.  That was
The last time I saw him, and the
Last time I ever would, and that
Is how I always remember him.

I chanced upon old standing stones
Bedecked in lichen green
Arrayed in banks of marble rows
With walk-ways in-between
Each bore the scars of craftsman’s graft
Recording time and toll
One fading remnant epitaph
For each immortal soul

And earthward bound the sun polite
With mountain cap in hand
Fell silent as the hearse of night
Rode forth across the land
The distant city lights awoke
Like lanterns on a lake
A bubbled haze of smog and smoke
Above the city scape
 
Large crowds of late-night shoppers milled
Around the late-night stores
And roars of drunken laughter spilled
From dingy nightclub doors
The squealing cries of lorries lade
With goods to stock and stack
Were echoed by the cramped stockade
Of dwellings back-to-back

As one by one the lights went out
In windows dark and dim
Arrayed in banks of brick and grout
Old dwellings grey and grim
Stood sentinel to souls entombed
In plots devoid of green
The living mass of those inhumed
With walk-ways in-between