She is making her sounds, the ones for everyone else.
She goes cri-cri like a walking bird and then
sounds of a big bird alert on the rocks.
Crying woman makes the sound of a baby about to be fed.
This one is the sound of someone alone a long time,
the sound of someone cast out at sea, the sounds
of wreckers guiding a boat to their reef,
of the ship’s crew who are drowning
and the indignations of those who tell this years after.
This one is from the mountains, she makes big sounds
full of cloud and rain, she begins her infinity.
This one cries mother, thinking of her people.
When she thinks of the south she sings
like someone asleep in the sun all day.
This one the otter. This one the gazelle
running for love of running. And this one
who is quiet a long time is a gull
pitching out from the cliff between land and sea
till she becomes the air she swings on. This one
begins shouting straight off and never stops,
a devourer that wants everything at once.
This one is creeping through grasses to ambush,
and at last she’s a spilled song
Silence is hers, she makes that
when she thinks of another, when through her sleep
her children are running too near the water.
The cry of an animal kicked awake to its guard,
noises of something lost in the thicket, she croons
the names of old lovers dead in the wars.
Some sounds come from nowhere, she wants
a man who lives on the moon’s back, she wants
to die if she does for eternity what she does now.
The first awake in the camp, she’s about
seeking warmth, she goes out of her self’s house.
She’s the first creature to crawl out of the sea.
She makes all sounds, I don’t know if she’s one or many.
If ever she puts them together at once I shall drown
and drift with her in the sea off Northumberland
crying forever forever, awake to the last star.