Part three of CK Stead’s series of poems on Sunday
A sonnet for Peter Wells
At your last book-launch I said I hadn’t known
which of us would die first – and I still didn’t.
We joked about sad farewells, but when I said
an atheist’s last could not be ‘See you later’
I thought your brow darkened – so I’m not surprised
your obsequies today were Anglican
with ‘sure and certain hope’ of resurrection.
How could poor weak ‘hope’ be ‘sure and certain’?
but as your coffin ablaze with white blossom
was walked to the waiting hearse and trundled off
3 orcas entered the harbour, a trinity,
a Sign perhaps, Peter, and fond farewell
to one who as a boy had wanted a doll
and as a man found one, and married him.
