Winter Funeral, Guérande


He’s the only one who doesn’t feel the cold:
the rest of us are freezing while we pray
we’ll meet him once again when time runs out
and we’re all jammed in the dock on Judgment Day.

I mutter the words, wondering how on earth
anyone thought they were more than a means of control,
to persuade the hungry classes paradise
would be their prize for stomaching their role –

but we fell silent, driving homeward past
a field of sunflowers unbowed by the frost:
more proof of Climate Change, we’d later say,
like the rising sea along our stretch of coast

though I wanted an army I could believe would soon
uproot and march out in a golden host
towards Jerusalem, where we would find
waiting for us, all those we’d loved, and lost.

Tom Vaughan
 
If you have any thoughts on this poem, Tom Vaughan would be pleased to hear them.