A Poem by John Stammers

Funeral II

Your collected works are all there
together in the one volume:
the Queen of Cups, the extrovert in his hiding,
the boy left to make sense of sense.

The cold rectangle of the chapel
is the sarcophagus of our loss;
the catafalque supports
our northern sky.

Four years have passed, four years
since the final periodicity of your line:
the permanent flowering of your bonny new status. 

You were a charm, my dear Roderick,
but charm is a meagre lustre
wiped away with a wave of the damned.

John Stammers’ first collection, Panoramic Lounge-bar, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His collection, Stolen Love Behaviour, was Poetry Book Society Choice. He edited the Picador Book of Love Poems. He is currently working on his next collection.