The Boneyard

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