20090415

The Colour of Bones

A scarlet maiden lies in the cliff
open bellied. Chorister bats scaffold birds
shrieking farewell adieu

Stained rune-terracotta; fragments
The small beads of her pelvis
Blossom like cherries. From

such bones fall prophecy. Cerise, jasper
raspberry. Others fade to dung
in the scribbling sands

Old women plucking weeds. Softly folding
sea into her eyes; she sings enchantments
to colour bones green

2 Comments:

Blogger Russell CJ Duffy said...

Quirky like a Kate Bush song. Riddled with a sense of history and spectres and of the beauty of nature aging mans creations. (I think)

12:41 PM  
Blogger Sue hardy-Dawson said...

Ah well, you see there is a red skeleton somewhere I once saw a documetry about except now I can find no trace of it. It was thought to be female but turned out in fact to be male, which is only dissapointing, because a scarlet maiden sounds so much more poetic. I wrote a version of this some time ago and was going to put a foot note but I can't find the details. Anyway I thought I'd keep her a maiden the rest is his unknown history.

2:18 PM  

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