The Boneyard
LOCATION: East London Cemetery, Plaistow, London
A coal sky
Frames her hollow face
Pale with sorrow
Bloodless, paper skin
Through sheets of rain
See her dancing
In the boneyard
To a sad lament
A bell tower
Composes eulogies
Keeping time
To all the dead hearts
At midnight’s stroke
A raven croaks
Another light grows dim
On the East End
Calling out from the end of the world
Reach to you from the end of the world
On the hollow wind
A melody climbs and falls
Aria from the great divide
A chorus grows
Voice upon voice
A third, a nine
Haunted words
Form a ghostly rhyme
Nightingale
Lying spread eagle
Ripped from stem to stern
In the mud and rubble
A swell mob
Beats a pounding rhythm
In the cobbled streets
Near the convent halls
Through the Swallow Gardens
To the Crown and Seven
Seek oblivion
In a glass of gin
Feel the walls breathe
Hear them rasp and wheeze
Taste the pestilence
In the thick air
Calling out from the end of the world
Reach to you from the end of the world
Calling out from the end of the world
Reach to you from the end of the world
© 2013 Crandall
A coal sky
Frames her hollow face
Pale with sorrow
Bloodless, paper skin
Through sheets of rain
See her dancing
In the boneyard
To a sad lament
A bell tower
Composes eulogies
Keeping time
To all the dead hearts
At midnight’s stroke
A raven croaks
Another light grows dim
On the East End
Calling out from the end of the world
Reach to you from the end of the world
On the hollow wind
A melody climbs and falls
Aria from the great divide
A chorus grows
Voice upon voice
A third, a nine
Haunted words
Form a ghostly rhyme
Nightingale
Lying spread eagle
Ripped from stem to stern
In the mud and rubble
A swell mob
Beats a pounding rhythm
In the cobbled streets
Near the convent halls
Through the Swallow Gardens
To the Crown and Seven
Seek oblivion
In a glass of gin
Feel the walls breathe
Hear them rasp and wheeze
Taste the pestilence
In the thick air
Calling out from the end of the world
Reach to you from the end of the world
Calling out from the end of the world
Reach to you from the end of the world
© 2013 Crandall