Four Poems

On the Day No One Was Found Guilty of the Murder of Damilola Taylor

The peace of trees is this still
rootedness and we have lost all that.

Here is this singing calm even
the stupid death of a young beech sapling

splintered to fall for fun, for screaming fun,
will give back young boughs and silk-scrap leaves

to the brown earth and we have lost all that.


In an Urban Cemetery

It's morning and overgrown here, the very air's forgotten:
soft, summer-scented, scent of weeds, sharp nettles,
elder, bramble and briar. Birds live on worms and sing
in the human silence. Beyond rotting Corporation railings
the world drives to work, walks the dog, eats, drinks,
plugs in the modem, lies hungover, shouts at the kids. Here
stone remains, varied, though not as various as living:
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