Skull

Worms, moles, water and grasses

have brought down the mountains –

the landscape presses its messages.

The hurts come together, the eye

opening on light, a shrill of insects

flooding the ears, the paranoid skull.

Let it all go down, blue water of lakes

at prayer in the rocks, bracken, sticks,

the woods and the shivering creatures

invading the threads, the warm cells,

bone canals weepy with blood.

Pain raises its monuments, the dead

thick as porridge in Flanders go down,

the villages make do with an obelisk.

Let it all go down the voices

cry on under the helmet. The stone

image presents arms: he was there,

he was real – motion of shoulder,

too long in the sleeve, the set jaw.

He writes postcards, sneaks through wire,

he crouches again in the muck, he envies

the dead brother and the snails,

he trails home like a black sulking wing

fresh from nowhere, the dreams

ready their sights and their knives –

nothing now but this blood, this cry out

Let it all go down

till the bone hood shatters

and the roots break in