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Song of All Souls' Day

(Bunhill Fields, 21/7/97)

I saw the bindweed curl about your tomb
Whereon I set a rose, now short of breath,
And marked the similarity of death
Between your chance to live, its time to bloom.
For though your Maker overflowed your hours
Yet still upon your blossom climbed the weed;
You noticed but did nothing; thus its seed
Cast round the earth, and choked your budding flowers.
	But brazen trumpets round its conquering green
	This bindweed blossom, in the rose's stead;
	Just so, before you took this rosy bed
	You sometimes woke and showed what might have been.
But now your chance is gone as chances go.
I've learned your lesson. Let me find the hoe.

This one is something of a record for me, since I wrote the original draft in one go, during my lunch break. Usually with me a sonnet has a far more leisurely gestation. (By the way, the "you" is a real person, but still living in real life: and anyway Bunhill Fields have been closed for new burials for well over a century now. So it's rather an extrapolation; indeed, in some ways, it's partly autobiographical...)