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Arts & Letters
Your coffin looked unreal,
fancy as a wedding cake.
I chose your grave clothes with care,
your favourite stripey shirt,
your blue cotton trousers.
They smelt of woodsmoke, of October,
your own smell was there too.
I chose a gansy of handspun wool,
warm and fleecy for you. It is
so cold down in the dark.
No light can reach you and teach you
the paths of the wild birds,
the names of the flowers,
the fishes, the creatures.
Ignorant you must remain
of the sun and its work,
my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,
my cub, my kid, my nestling,
my suckling, my colt. I would spin
time back, take you again
within my womb, your amniotic lair,
and further spin you back
through nine waxing months
to the split seeding moment
you chose to be made flesh
word within me.
I'd cancel the love feast
the hot night of your making.
I would travel alone
to a quiet mossy place,
you would spill from me into the earth
drop by bright red drop.
By kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland from The Man Who Was Marked By Winter, 1991
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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