Having come this far, in response
To a woman’s voice, a distant wailing,
Now he thinks he can distinguish words:
You may come in —
You are already in.
But the wall is thornbushes, crammed, barbed.
A human skeleton, warped in a dive, is clasped
In the grip of a flowery briar. His shrinking flesh
Reproves him, turns and flows
Backwards like a tide.
Knowing it now for a trick of the light
He marches forward, takes account of
True stones and mortared walls,
Downfaces the shimmer
And shakes to hear the voice humming again:
In the bed of the stream
She lies in her bones —
Wide bearing hips and square
Elbows. Around them lodged,
Gravegoods of horsehair and an ebony peg.
‘What sort of ornament is this?
What sort of mutilation? Where’s
The muscle that called up the sound,
The tug of hair and the turned cheek?’
The sign persists, in the ridged fingerbone
And he hears her voice, a wail of strings.