As the Taliban surged back into Kabul
and the international correspondents
looked more exhausted with every broadcast
but not as exhausted as the refugees
I thought of my young second cousin Matthew,
one of the four hundred and fifty-seven
flown back from Afghanistan in sealed coffins
to Wootten Bassett and then, in Matthew’s case,
to York for his military funeral
in the Minster, after which the gun-carriage
paraded him on a tour of the packed streets
before beginning its sedate procession
to the cemetery while we, the mourners,
plus vanloads of soldiery sped off ahead
at a pace Matthew would surely have preferred,
with sirens and flashing lights, to get there first;
all of which might have been designed to persuade
his parents that being blown up by a bomb
at twenty-three was a worthy destiny –
an opinion they are perhaps revising.
