By: James Aitchison

(Cimetière du Père Lachaise)

Come climb the hills and wander through
this labyrinth of death. Alleyways of tombs,
forbidding mausoleums, tenements of the dead,
Molière, Gertrude Stein, graves nudging graves,
Chopin, Bizet, Edith Piaf, wedged like sardines,
the poplars reaching the sky even if the dead souls didn’t.
Jim Morrison finds peace, fenced off from fanatics.
Oscar Wilde rests behind lipstick-smeared glass.
Life itself has an end, but here, these twisting terraces
go on and on, forever.