As petals fallen from the roses

A poem taking its title and first line from the last line of the last poem I wrote.

As petals fallen from the roses

As petals fallen from the roses,
memories crowd the dry clay,
insect-trod and crawled.

Petals fallen, scentless
as memories, so old
their parchment is scorched,
sepia-seeped and smeared.

These roses remember
a time long ago
when people had sepia faces,
and they sat in silent sadness
beneath brown clouds,

and brown rain fell,
though they say the sun shone too
but never quite enough
to give colour to those cheeks
and petals fallen from limp bouquets
held in sad, sinewy hands.

The clay was always dry and cracked,
then like now, and the roses never did well
beneath the hot south wall.