(to be sung)

by Penelope Sayles

Beyond twin pyres,

Breathing under autumns’ sleep’d smoke

Her own deep centre remembers

And her centre

Shedding limits long won,

Warns of sharp summoned dream

Here, beneath twin banks

Of earth and stone

Too late.

Toward the chalken burial

She jumps the quarried ditch,

Skirts the dirt scarp,

And he screams.

A cliff edged red and crumbling,

Whisper shaken from boar’s tusk

Cruelly taken, foully shook,

And he screams.

Full eyes moving

he is moving and

her bones plead boundaries still,

But her centre knows him,

This boy grinning playing

Dancing the binding upon her.

And she is bound.

Hard roots knot her feet

Moss soaks her hands

And soil grips her throat.

An iron blade rusts his hands, his tongue,

And there is nothing else,

She must speak his name.

Then she flies,

Easily up,

Away,

Through night empty air.

He screams

And she lands facing him.