Raymond Antrobus
Sutton Road Cemetery
after Eavan Boland
His mother had driven him back to London in the half light,
He sighed in the passenger seat. They stopped
by the Southend seas as the wind picked up and
clouds thinned into English women. All the stones
had said nothing of their names as he skimmed them wide
across the waves.
Earlier, when he’d found the grave of his great-grandmother
by the elderberry tree it was the one time he’d wanted
someone white to appear and ask
where he was from. It would’ve been no skin off him
to point at her stone and say
here