At Bunhill Fields

By late morning  I could hear
the screams of children at play

under a flourishing sky of navigable blue.
Before Blake's headstone

a discarded daffodil
dying near the green railings

safeguarded from the roadworks
and blown litter by the corporation.

Here witnesses gathered
for a funeral

as a fifteen year old girl
was laid to rest,

the surviving trees and the forgotten graves
listened for the steps

on dry paving stones,
the high-rise sunshine

on the faces of flats and offices,
the occupied fingers of stone

which point towards
the growth of an unsettled eternity.

Byron Beynon
 
If you have any comments on this poem, Byron Beynon
would like to hear from you.

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