My grandad fought at the
Battle of Kohima (Burma) in 1944. I've written this as a memorial to him (Ted
Hoban).
Kohima
What a marvel is ancient
man!
tangled propagation
delayed to the end
the divine sepulchre of
life, tennis court
overrun, bayoneted and shot
extreme separation anxiety
in dying or isolated from
the body
when pernicious lists are
dry springes – when prefixed mourning
counting toward gestures
of weird bread/wine ignore the recognition of absence,
the suffering of absence.
A petrified destination so dark it’s not like sleep,
Austere black as
anaesthetic, but
One null device unannealed
ignobly saturated in foreign rain
will be no more string,
strategically and in the light
miss you to would miss you
