Once a gypsy read my palm and said
I’d own a vast estate. Here it is.
I’d have no money worries.
That bit was right.

My life was dragged in a blanket to this grave
By some friends-in a delirium of blood-
It was night time. They were scared
And did not see me breathe or take my pulse.

I felt drunk so it didn’t seem so bad-
Like jumping to the top of a first night theatre queue-
To be first in the cradle of recoiling earth,
And swaddled by the heavy guns from home.

But now, buried in a rush, too high- just below the plough-
Each day is just too hot or cold for me.
I’d love to climb the earthen steps
And drop the wasted decades, one by one.

As their spades arranged the earth above my face,
I thought they said, some day, they’d take me home.
They’d bury me- properly- somewhere nicer far than this.
Then a machine gun coughed, and no-one spoke again.

That was years ago.
Now the crows all circle. The tractor comes.
The plough opens the earth’s clay volume at my page.

O why won’t the soldiers come again?
Why won’t they take me home?