At the Communard's Wall

for Peter Watkins

by Ian Maxton

I took a picture it did not turn out

and today it is raining
quiet not ash or acid rain

Beneath the streets
you might hear a dreadful yawn

for the dead are tired and I am dead
tired

Everything is so far 
from the blank wet stones: my feet ache

The problem is we can’t hold all the dead
in our heads—there are too many

So how do we hold them?

______

Ian Maxton is a novelist and critic whose work has appeared in Boston Review, The Hobbyhorse, Protean, and elsewhere.

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