Butterflies' wings,
red, like a dowager's velvet gown,
must be pinned in,
must be greased and primed,
to tick.

You said I was young,
read, like lines from a script.
With your fluttering hand you
murmur me
poetry:
smile at me
cunningly.

You breathe smoke like a purple bruise spreading.

Your lips are wet pebbles;
I can kiss no moss.
The moan at your throat
only tickles the pearls there.
I don't shiver;
I don't care.

I wish we could burn,
but you run in my veins, you cavernous river.
The band on your finger winks bright in the mirror,
so there is no need of me here.

Your dusted wings unfurl.
You pluck the pin from your breast
and float away on the wind.

Feathers spinning,
please try not to touch the ground.
I want you to stay.

Please try not to touch the ground.
We never lasted long, but now
I want you to stay. All these
feathers spinning
in the wake you left.

Did you ever leave a wake behind you?
There was never enough time
For the dust to rest.

At the end of the field
two trees stood - wrinkled hands
praying, or holding the sun.
No sound. Even the winds were
those silent winds that lie
still in piles of leaves
then quietly move on like ghostly children;
their hair flows like wisps of smoke
streaming from a silenced candle.

I stopped breathing
and stumbled.
I saw the gateway under the hands of Earth.
There were night birds in the air,
floating like oil on water
- their chests glistened.
When they moved their wings I saw
their bodies tear in half and grow
and blot the sky black with feathers.

Now the mist lifts and the moors fall away.
Then they come to lay my bones in a sacred place.
The sky is dark and infinite –
I feel the rocks around me crumble
as another land glisters through the arch.
The quiet air falls quieter still…
and I walk
to where the sun falls
between those trees.

The path pulsed
and sent shockwaves up my legs,
churning miles behind me,
but still miles before me.

I kicked dust into clouds;
weeds shrank from the sun
as my eyes burned
and matched the colour of the sky.

When the rain fell I laughed
and opened my mouth –
not sure I caught any drops,
but still, it was raining.

He shoots the bird and gives its name
To the arrows fletched from its wings.
He wears the feathers knotted in his hair.

He cuts into a fruit and watches
The juices run and bites
The flesh and knows its name.
His arms, for branches, bear the peach again.

He takes downs trees and pulls up meadows,
Upturns the hills and shatters constellations into day,
And in among the clay and rubble
He tastes the fruit and sings the sparrow's name.

Unbroken damsel of the water's edge,
poised as if she were living.
Weren't you crafted from gold, in the riverbed?

Never such a shining thing was born of mud:
Mirages for wings and clockwork for blood.

How fast did the moving hands that
tolled her final minute tick?
What eternal, turning clock
knew the second her wing-beats stopped?
And where’s the scratch that shows the place
death touched her glassy face?

She might have been a broach or pin
with diamonds on her silver skin,
who never had life in her hinges and bolts.

But there she lies
with twinkling compound eyes -

“The air has a new smell tonight.”
Cool green
vapours from the grass.
Mint leaves once grew by the water.
I remember.

“What's wrong?”
I was crying by the lodge
where he and I lay.
I remember those frozen tracks -

“Are you cold?”
Dead things were caught in the ice
and they seemed to stare
at the waltz of the stars.

“Hold my hand.”
We and the waves around us
seemed to breathe together.
They cracked the ice and clapped at the mud.
I remember.

I still know the things he told me
His secrets and memory
...
I don't want to forget.

The soil took us:
(it opened and swallowed us)
Our feet, our stomachs and chests
falling into the ground’s deep breath,
entwined hands that might have been roots,
and his mouth, gagging at the beauty of it.