Everyday Poems

He was
Finally frail and empty, dignity gone
A distant ancestor of himself
Was there some shadow of self left, when
we departed
Carefully stepping across the floor, to miss?
The praline like mark
Still, with the stench lingering long after, in London

A London remembered
Gone the radical certainties
Of this ‘unbending tree’
Always painted in liberating colours
A vision that we could easily see, a truth
Now, looking like the Belsen inmates
He often considered
Not diminished but extinguished