ABSTRACT
As W. H. Auden wrote about W. B. Yeats, dead the week in 1939 before Auden was writing, ‘He became his admirers’ (Collected Poems). In this poem of Robin’s, his grandmother becomes, for a moment, the words he has used to construct this object, this poem. The poem objectifies, for a moment, for every reader of it, Robin’s love for his grandmother. Schools, as well as families, are from time to time bereaved. It is a critical part of a school’s Personal, Social and Moral Education curriculum to know how death should be handled. There is more to be done than merely coping with the crisis when it happens. Arguably the deepest tragedy is that of children who literally ‘become mortal’ before their parents, like Justin and - most horrifically - Jamie Bulger who, inevitably, haunts the pages.
