Autun

As I drove away from the sepulchre of Lazarus,

While the French cows looked sadly out

Under the wet branches of Berry,

I could hear other voices drowning

The Grande Polonaise on the radio:

Remember us, we have travelled as far

As Lazarus to Autun,

And have not we too been dead and in the grave

Many times now, how long at a stretch

Have we had no music but the skeleton tune

The bones make humming, the knuckles warning each other

To wait for the pause and then the long low note

The second and third fingers of the left hand

Hold down like a headstone.

How often was I taken apart,

The ribs opened like a liquor press,

And for decades I heard nothing from my shoulders —

My hair flying, at large like a comet —

How often reconstructed,

Wrapped and lagged in my flesh, and again

Mapped and logged, rolled up and put away

Safely, for ever.

On the mornings of my risings

I can hardly see in the steam.

But I know I arise like the infant

That dances out of the womb

Bursting with script,

The copious long lines,

The redundant questions of childhood.

She fills the ground and the sky

With ranked and shaken banners,

The scrolls of her nativity.

I stammer out music that echoes like hammers.