At Barham Crematorium

for Elsie Bicknell

Here a young girl
on this clearest of mornings
runs about, turns about,
all her life dancing.

Here a young woman
with husband and son
looks about, flies about,
leading life on.

Here is a woman
alive in the deepest loss.
When her son was a man
Death took his face.

When her son was a man
she had worlds in her view.
Soo there was nothing
but a day to go through.

One day or forty years.
So long on her own . . .
how does each morning
blaze its new dawn?

Stand about, turn about:
here a young woman
laughs, here a girl runs.
Something is human

that goes right through bullets
and bombs and the bullying
of riches and wrong power.
Something is calling

for good on this morning
from an old woman’s bones.
Leave her now, let her be
while the waste burns.