Anna-versary

“Boy killed on Bicycle”; smallest print, four lines
Islanded in a tossing sea of type,

My little son, whose face I never saw,
Who could not wait to bless your father ’s eyes

Part of me for ever is the January morning
Coming into the Clyde in the frosty moonlight

A worn-out body laid in quiet earth,
Attendant trees, a wattle’s throb of gold,

In that keen morning it was good to wake.
The sun that roused the swans on the lagoon

This death of a man, this sudden stop of life,
Such total end, or such a faring forth
Into what regions?

When a man dies
We find that suddenly there’s time to praise him.

You chose a marvellous morning to be born,
The orange edge of dawn, the stars paling,

The bamboo cut to suit you from our garden
Has become your favourite stick – dried and varnished

Catching the distinctive T’ang of old China
She chooses for herself the character of Punctual Autumn

Like liquid silk in golden eddies
the honey laps into my tin.

Brother fare well, journeying to that Kingdom
Of faithful servants, and of work fulfilled

Little death of a little dog
In a death-wish world of news by body-count

They’re burning Old Sox’s shack
Just two weeks since he died.

A garden gracious, serene and spacious at Lambeth –
This is the dream, the vision that shall be its crown

..You they found fallen, holding a garden hose,
Where, year on year, you watered, weeded, nurtured things to grow.

Ninety years youthful, questing through generations,
historian of two hemispheres, quickener of other minds,

Raged, raged against the death of others’ light,
Toiled, fought, till sick and blind received their sight.

I praise a heroine of the Soviet Union,
pianist Yudina, through Moscow’s gloom
spelling a Mozart magical concerto.

..apartness conquered by the power of love.
Carry us with you as you journey on.

His question ranged the echoing galaxies
of empty cold unanswering space, returning
home to our earth.