Graveyard of St Peter-in-the-East, St Edmund Hall
For E.M.
Snowdrop, snowdrop, tell:
what news of the underground,
the weather in Hell?
Your toes are tickled
by the beards of the dead, their
slanted stones deckled
and foxed with lichen-
rings of shaggy galaxies.
In flocks you beckon
me to read shallow-
graven names on time-thumbed tomes.
Soon you’ll sallow, snow-
drop: now so new, yet
your hair’s already waxed white
from that oubliette
you hunkered in, torn
between last year and this; or
is it a tricorn
hat you hold instead
in green-gloved hands, as you stand
shaking your bowed head?
Send Letters To:
The Editor
London Review of Books,
28 Little Russell Street
London, WC1A 2HN
letters@lrb.co.uk
Please include name, address, and a telephone number.
