On your ornate monument,
made from a dry stone wall
covered by so many wild flowers,
the handsome man is buried.
A child of Greece and Rome
Born in the north of England
With a socially aspirant mother.

But the dead close their eyes,
That their nakedness may not be seen,
in this world where sin is not to be accepted.
So, closing his eyes, he poured water.
As the women washed him,
One she turned  & she saw,
Him, as if for the first time,
In a coffin with closed eyes, tightly;
She sobbed, began to tear her hair,
She smashed her whole face into blood,
I went home and sat there,
Until her husband came to take her away
The dead man was still dead....

In a previous age
Somebody said:
"What's wrong?" —
No letters studied by Aristotle
No written history. At least that may stay
That way. His story is so variable....
But we lost the most honest soldiers– in mood, in form,
like Apollonian apparitions,
like letters written by Cicero
Men wrote history. Some say that will stay.
But we lost the tenderest and the bravest
of our kind in the world wars
when a military-industrial complex
beseiged and murdered with impunity.
A generation of old Macedonians relate
how from his mother's womb he was dragged
He was a pupil of philosophy,
reared in rhetoric. blessed in sanctuaries.

But David closed his eyes,
That nakedness may not be seen, that sin be not accepted,
So, closing his eyes, he poured wine, his wife washed him,
She turned and saw him firstly 
So that when he  closed his eyes tightly;
She sobbed, began to tear her hair,
She smashed her whole face into blood,
I went home and sat there,
Until her husband came home.