Mausoleum

Tomb of the Quadriga, Vatican Necropolis

Not quite an absence of birds – there are painted birds
perched in the fresco rafters; peacocks and something
like a dove preen themselves in the white air.
They stand for mourning and the everlastingness

of things. You know the Romans persisted in feeding
their dead while they waited for forever?
Honey and bread and the best Falernian wine.
In the scalloped niche two urns unbroken, their flanks

touching as they would have touched in life. A faded
wedge of blue for want of sky and underfoot,
because the dead have always somewhere else to be,
a four-horse chariot led forth by a ghost or a god;

the roadway strewn with olive branches and black
flowers, whose petals turn from petals into stones.

John Glenday