The Death of Mrs. Rose

Mrs. Rose was a shadow.
Her thinness a witness from the past.

„I `m coming Joe“ she would say.

„To join your bones, one day.“

Mrs. Rose braced her frame,

As pram wheels debased the same.

As the naked baby cried.

And the buggy rammed her side;

As she queued in irritated line.

For the single decker, chasing time;

as old ladies as herself, spilled forth,

at concertina impatient doors,

The claws, discarding upon the uneven concrete floors.

The unheard grave bells chimed.

„I´m coming Joe, soon it´ll be my time.“

She prayed, as slab for slab of inhuman wall,

passed defaced in listless grafiti scrawl.

Lined tearing faces passed in oblique terror at it all,

Green and pink youngsters with funny hair,

shouted into the city sprawl,

and a haggard driver ordered them off

In cursed lunges at their leather breasts.

„We´re lost“, they claimed.

„I know“. Joe, I´ll soon be at your side. It pains too much.

Familiar soundless sights told Mrs. Rose

That she was near;

The twisted beech sick of winter´s leafless time,

Where once a silver row had stood,

cowered as the crowded bus inclined,

the childless hill of flaking copse and dangling washing line.

Soon the grey headstones poked through the vandalized fence,

and starved grass succoured ther faded words.

Mrs. Rose, grey and old walked on, cold,

A shadow of ther time.

„I`ve come Joe“ she said

ends