even if the life is cruel
is your last sentence written

[on its own at the top
of an otherwise empty page]

as I work up through the script
marking pages as ‘seen’

ready for that other marking,
later, when judging

chronologically what has led
to this apocalypse.

Assuming you have
answered all, I know

it is Laskey’s poem,
so I hope – at the age of sixteen –

you will look for the snow
to trod and mess about in,

throw a big round one at
nobody in particular,

and laugh at the cruelty
that might have been.