The poem
'and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence' -- George Eliot, Middlemarch
Dead dandelions, bald as drumsticks, swaying by the roadside
like Hare Krishna pilgrims bowing to the Juggernaut.
They have given up everything. Gold gone and their silver gone,
humbled with dust, hollow, their milky bodies tan
to the colour of annas. The wind changes their identity:
slender Giacomettis, Doré's convicts, Rodin's burghers of Calais
with five bowed heads and the weight of serrated keys . . .
They wither into mystery, waiting to find out why they are,
patiently, before nirvana when the rain comes down like vitriol.