And so they come back, those girls
who painted the watch dials luminous, and died.

They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.

It’s as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.

And I want to know this: I want to know how they came
to believe that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right.

But though they open their mouths to answer me
all I can hear is light.

 

John Glenday