I should have walked right past but something winked

From just beyond the road.  I turned around.

Some angled stones, a jut of char, and then a pinprick

Blooming on the wreckage of a house burnt down.

Mad king of a rose!  And like a song back there, I thought.

More like my life – ditched and gone on with itself,

The emblem of something else to which I’m bound fast,

Perhaps the day my blood is brought

To a standstill, music overtaking me at last.

Everywhere I’ve gone a song has sprung up in my wake:

This came to me, an incidental revelation,

Having seen a rose growing in an odd place.