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Judy Gahagan

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Going Gentle Into That....

We should have chosen protest flowers:
mauve inflorescences of Smoke Bush -
Snowball Tree, Hibiscus, Red Hot Poker,
floral uprisings for the angry dead,
in the Garden of Remembrance;

but the brochure offered Rose Bush:
boudoir Floribunda, blousy Pinkies,
Princess Mary, Peace, or Arlene Francis.

The discretion of our choosing numbed us,
grouped palely under pale cold birch trees
to choose the Place: escarpment, cromlech,
hero’s pike, a bluff, a boulder, some
indignant surge of earth for them -

But the brochure offered Seat,
or Niche, Stepping Stone on a winding path to nowhere.
‘Peace’ and we agreed on the secluded Arbour.

We’d watched his trembling wafery hand
spoon jelly to his once cantankerous wife
those long last days.
Now we’d leave them
at peace among their neighbours,
leave them for another country.

For a big country
where the candles burn all night
in walled shrines beyond
the monumental towns
where the dead glitter their presences
on the great black hills.

 

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