REST

Grant them rest –

sad Jim of Basingstoke

whose temples are an iron ring

tightening till he shrieks;

Mary from Salford blocking her ears

to the baby’s screams,

the ammonia reek her solitude;

Sarah stewing in Budleigh Salterton

whose red cliffs mirror her rosacea

and round her close prison walls;

Jeff who listens in Tooting Beck

to hectoring arguments no one else hears;

bag-lady Cindy searching Salford streets

with her exhausted pram;

Janet, sex-trader out of Bermondsey,

who snorts white heights

in order to forget professional rapes – 

to these and all others that life molests,

grant them eternal rest.

This day, this day of wrath

will extinguish the glowing cinders of the dead

as David told us and the Sibyl and Karl Marx

and each one of us in our own silences:

Jim’s saved his gyros for a bottle of Smirnov and fifty paracetamols

to loosen his iron ring;

Mary’s followed her baby into the dark;

and the rose-red cliffs of Budleigh Salterton

helped Sarah escape rosacea;

now no one hears Jeff’s voices;

and Cindy’s pram rests rusting

in an unpeopled street

while Janet’s heights

have cracked her skull.

On this day of tears

tubas and trumpets announce

an end to panic

and a truce to black despair.

Numb their pain, numb their pain

now and at the hour of their death.

On this day of tears, botched man

stumbles from the glowing cinders of the dead.

May the eternal dark shine on them all –

on Jim

on Mary

on Sarah

on Jeff

on Cindy

on Janet and on all their brothers and sisters.

Grant them rest.