And another rose grows,
over the wall it goes.
He only takes the best,
what’s that say about the rest?
We mope beside the car,
serious faces, boot ajar,
his name in flowers royal blue,
for service sheets we queue.
No bells are being rung,
the hymns are quietly sung
by smokers with sweaty palms
and no appetite for psalms,
or prayers that no one knows.
On the sombre service goes
with a sermon to forget
by a vicar that he’d never met.
We all nod to one another,
share smalltalk like no other,
and desperate not to cry,
men who rarely wear a tie,
shirts bursting at their necks,
pay their final false respects
to a man they didn’t really know.
Just felt they ought to go.
A tape of Martin Fry is on
with his cardiac-related song.
As they turn the oven on,
we hear of love that’s gone.

So the curtains gently close
to the music that he chose,
before he blocked his arteries.
Crackling out in chapel three,
with unintended irony,
All of my Heart by ABC.