Those behind
Those about me
Millions crowding to come after me
Look over my shoulder.
Together we consider
The merit of stone (I hold a stone in my hand for all to see)
A geologist tells the time it has endured
Endurance, a virtue in itself, we say
Makes its own monument .
We pause, resent
The little span
A miser's rule
Inched out for man
But blood consoles us
Can be squeezed from us
Not from stone.
Saying this fools no one
A sudden bluster of words
Claims for human seed
A special dispensation
Foxes and flowers and other worthies
All excluded.
Immediately sixteen creeds
Cry out to be defended –
A state of emergency exists ;
Flying buttresses
Revolving domes, a spire extended
By the spirit of
A new and startling growth of thorns
Skies in Asia catch
On uplifted wings of temples
In the Near East the talk is of stables.
Part one of 'A Poem In Three Parts' from the Hangman Ties the Holly
By Anne Wilkinson
