In the Churchyard
In the Churchyard
Be still, love, the ghost moves in me again—
the whatever,
the itch without a name.
It has woken like a fox
in the numb passages
to make me make music in the ashen time.
Am I simply mad or was it
more than the earth’s outbreathing
rose from the churchyard grass
to claim me when I was seven
till I swayed dazed
by the Norman church six centuries ancient,
where bas-relief faces haunt the walls
and the pews are polished glossy
by a lineage of dutiful buttocks,
reeled among gravestones
locked like mossy grey teeth
to the forefathered ground?
Am I simply mad or was I
truly invaded or taken
by something sudden as a wind
when the sky grew more blue and lucid
than England normally allows
a calligraphy of strange birds
scribbling from the trees
gold on the pious scrolled gates
as I giddied through them
and something forever gone different?
Be still, love, the ghost moves in me again—
the whatever,
the itch without a name.
It has woken like a fox
in the numb passageways
to make me make music in the ashen time.
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