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1
The priests trace their words in the sand, tapping their fingers
on the secret of desolation; the sand is fire, earth and air,
a call for water, a longing for the double life of yes and no.
‘Rise up Well, dug by innocents, and by the bucketful
you are dry.’ Drinking our thirst, we fumble for the memory of water,
sinking as though into a womb,
into silt that sighs with rotting plants, carnivorous snails,
and we leave our flesh to drown in the wetness -- but the meaning
drifts away from the words, all this is false: the water died
and we drink from desolation.
Whatever you look upon now, radio masts, satellite dishes,
their transmissions whirl together with the projections from our eyes,
are superimposed upon the seen. Find us like archaeology --
we were here, we lived, and our story
is disorganised, unfinished. Here’s our breath that scorched the Wall,
here are the sacred oracle stones
reduced to dust; here name, surname, when, how --
are emptied, and everything only sounds as though it could be understood.
I was the crier, who according to law and custom was speechless as a beast,
and danced on the lip of the yawning pit, announcing it without words,
slipping away through salt-lines that once were the shore.
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