One Easter Sunday Evening

The scents of jasmine vanish
In the halls where they speak Spanish
And the Banquets all are famished
Down the roads where taxis wait

With six pence in their pockets
And rolls of tenners
Photographs held in lockets
By prisoners and lovers

And Swindlers clean the carpets
Of Millionaires who ask for it
And antique dealers in markets
Hold up artworks to a glass

Four and twenty black birds
Follow out the ravens
Who speak nothing but death words
To the graveyard shift crews

And cockerels in the morning
Wear black for those in mourning
Heralding the dawning
Of a new day spent alone

In the tawny honey dew
Calligraphers they sew
New buttons onto old Bibles
Made of Stone

But I stand there waiting
To listen to lovers talking
From womb to tomb
They're fating
Every stepping stone

For the temples now in silence
Even the birds share no more violence
As the dream of Gerontius
The scurvy pebbles are thrown

And the potter at his wheel
As the pickers in the field
Unearth what was too real
For the inhabitants of Rome

I feel every ivy leaf
Fall like some coincidence
Of a half penny's incidence
As it spins like a silver moon

Unfortunates and cowards
Lock their loves in ivory towers
Wait for knights with white powers
To free them from black doom

Since Marshals ring up Burglars
To break into their particulars
And leave no trace of their vernaculars
As they speak upon their phone

I wish for heavenly bowers
In the sandpits of hell's dowers
Where the marriage of a Figaro
Is a wedding for God alone