The sun is now behind you or ahead,
never overhead. In lean light they sit
near the cemetery, close to the shuttered dead.

He, in tweeds and flannels, removes his cap.
Light makes a weak splash on the Byzantine dome
of his bullet-head. She takes off a glove, the map

of her veins is delicate wicker-work. He doesn't
smoke; left hand in pocket, right clasped in hers,
he stares at poppy wreaths flaring in bloody crescents

under the cross. All else is pale,
the light, the coral-white grass, a day-moon's
chalk cuticle groping on Braille.

They sit humbly in the humility of the sun,
looking at the wreaths in their funereal array,
their backs to the headstones scrolled with 'Christ is All'
or 'The Lord Giveth and He Taketh Away'.

The solstice on the earth's half-lit rim
darkens into its last lap. Do the old see
graveyards as a house they have to move in?

Or do the terrors of dying flesh pre-empt
such thought? And terrors for the soul, foetal and curled
in our inmost caves; for the soul's voyage
is longer-from the body's house to the other world.

But no such thoughts bother them. They look serene
as they close their eyes against the sun,
waiting for the seasons to stream past.

By two o'clock the light turns fickle
and fades away. They leave;
and blood spurts in the moon's cuticle.