The Pit

It’s not enough that ivy cracks my tomb?

Or leaves blow in the cracks? Bury me shallow

Without a box or sheet. Spade up a trench

And fling me face downwards in the seeping earth.

Thin roots must split my limbs to splintered threads,

Roots of a tree whose flowers are flakes of fire

Until they fall and wither on the grass

To brownish scabs. I have a daughter here;

She lies beside me, and I grope to find

These fragile curves of tiny hollow bones

Holding her to me till our dust is mixed.

•

Am I to believe

This hardly human creature had a face?

Only a mirror buried in the darkness

Reflecting nothing. All I see in her

Is part of my death and crumpled to decay.

I heard her first and only cry. My ears

Are blocked and deaf and cannot hear again.

Dead eyes can’t read her name though it is printed

A hundred times on this last folded page.