Why Did Philip Die.(Poem)

 
WHY DID PHILIP DIE 
 
   We drove until the sun was close to setting. 
   The car was loud with children and their toys. 
   Even after five years of forgetting 
   the slope still seemed familiar, with a noise 
   from blackboard-scraping cockatoos at the top 
   of tall trees where we had come to a stop. 
   We all walked over the gravel car-park 
   toward the stones of the cemetery. 
   The hill was now entirely 
   empty, its rows of marble bare and stark, 
 
   unlike that other day when I came here 
   along with such a throng as might be seen 
   supporting a country football match. Mere 
   pity for a life which should not have been 
   brought to a bitterly premature end 
   had drawn the crowd to celebrate a friend 
   leukemia had taken from us all. 
   Half a decade later, some cattle grazed 
   on golden-white grass, and gazed 
   around themselves, their shadows exactly as tall 
 
   as a flattened grave. The polished headstones 
   on the angled hillside were white as gulls 
   and cockatoos; they could have been old bones 
   except for their shape, or inverted hulls 
   of beached rowing boats. Amongst all that white, 
   in a striking unharmonious sight, 
   the only black slab was the one which marked 
   the tomb I had come to revisit that day. 
   Soon the children ran away 
   down the hill and past where the car was parked 
 
   to look more closely at a stooping cow. 
   So I was left alone at the graveside, 
   noticing pebbles arranged in a row 
   around its fringe, and flowers which had died 
   in a stained vase left ...