MR PERAZA PAUSES

Felled to one knee, long arm outstretched

like some warm-blooded spectre’s,

he places a soft, electric palm over

sacred, deep-etched letters – an echo

of his own, as yet, time-distant memorial:

Robert David Peraza

Here, at this weeping wall,

this place of no recovered body,

there’s added: Jnr 

A spire of golden sunlight prostrates

across such heavy toll of names,

strokes Peraza’s burdened salute,

his bowed head silvered with the

bromide of grief, lips pressed against

cold bronze in homage and despair.

Square falls of mighty waters

drown out the city’s din,

anaesthetise pain’s roar,

transfigure dust and devastation

down, down and away.

What is flesh but deluge and vapour;

spirit, if not power and cleansing?

Immaculate in Armani from

snug fit of his pearl-white collar

and cut of his silk-lined suit

to the buff of his well-heeled brogues,

just one dangling shoe-lace

betrays a decade’s locust years,

earths him to this holy ground

which he can never leave.