BMJ Support Palliat Care 2013;3:460 

Last poem

By F. T. Prince (1912–2003) 

With comment by John Birtwhistle

     Stand at the grave's head

     Of any common

     Man or woman,

     Thomas Hardy said,

     And in the silence

     What they were,

     Their life, becomes a poem.

     And so with my dead,

     As I know them

     Now, in his

     And her

     Long silences;

     And wait for, yet a while hence,

     My own silence.