Tatooist

I choose the ripples of your living flesh -
my paintings breathe, sweat, shimmer, soak the sun
not trapped in gloomy halls, or fixed on plaster
in the cold apse of a church. Oh yes, they'd last,
but not know anything of love: that certainty
of names within a heart; the scar which shows
where love once was (the name erased, though memory
still breathes); the only choice when boys go off to war,
(no call for death's heads, anchors, lips and roses then)
he creeps in, sheepish, says the one word, Mum.
I give him that. From skin to skin he takes her
to his grave, as she goes down with him.