The
women are dancing
Their
men are dead
Battlefield-fodder
The crows pick their bones
The wind takes their names
But they do not mourn them
For their blood makes the land shine
The
women are dancing
The
flat clifftop
Is a frozen cry
The land's howl of anguish
A futile prayer
Aimed at the sun
Bitten-off, stopped
It is their last
Hopeless refuge
The
women are dancing
Making
a sound in their throats
A wild, ancient music
Not of mourning, nor of joy
Neither threnody nor paean
It is the blood-song, the root-song
The song of the source
They have tuned themselves to it
Their bodies its plucked string
The one, holy note
The
women are dancing
Their
bodies sway
To the heart's rhythm,
Stamp and step
To the drum of blood,
Weaving a pattern
In the dusty light
Their lives' pattern woven
In the air's silk -
The
women are dancing
And it touches your skin
And enters your blood,
And your body sways
And the drum's in your blood
Stamp, step
And the edge draws closer
Stamp, step -
The
women are dancing
II
A
sudden cry out of nowhere, like the scream
of an arrow, and out of nowhere an eagle
appears, and hangs quivering in the sky, its wings
holding the world in balance.
Beneath
one bronze wingtip, the green valley
that lies below the mountains,
greenhouse and granary of the country,
its broad, fertile plain hung with mist
that makes a rainbow of the morning, and nourished
by the dead who watch with generous eyes
from between the warm leaves of the cypress trees,
or from the weeds that flow beneath the surface of the river.
And
beneath the other bronze wingtip, the curve
and sweep of the coastline, like the smooth edge
of a sea-washed bone, lapped by the waves
that roll in off the ocean, where the islands
drift rootless like empty fishingboats,
their lights faintly glimmering in the gathering dark,
so you cannot tell if they are lights or stars
or the phosphorescent souls of the drowned
temporary, fleeting candle-flames in the water.
As
you see it now so they saw it then,
when they danced for the last time,
and the eagle hanging above them as it hangs above you
is not god's messenger,
is no agent of salvation or punishment,
neither saviour nor accuser nor judge,
it has not come here to exact any price,
but has simply happened into this moment,
the
one who has arrived and will now depart,
folding the valleys and the river
and the shoreline and the ocean
deep within the folds of its feathers,
and carrying them off as it falls away downwind
leaving only its cry's echo
and
this sudden absence.
III
O
do not see the smashed bodies on the rocks -
Babies, children, young women, grandmothers -
Do
not see how they lie broken and scattered,
Arms and the legs flung outwards, or folded across faces,
Or
the heads twisted round at strange angles from the necks -
O
do not see the shoes, the headscarves, the shawls,
That hand, still clutching a doll, that hair with its piece of ribbon,
That
scrap of cloth flapping from a snag of branch -
O
do not see these lives tumbled like refuse over the cliffside,
But
let your eyes gaze through the sun's glare
To where tongues of flame crown the heads of the fallen
That
falling, are transformed, as in the old stories,
And become birds swooping out across the airwaves,
An
epiphany of feathers and song-blessed throats
And
the sun redeems them, the land, the sea, the sky
Redeem them, fling them sweeping along the track of their voices
Seeking a home beyond the burning, weeping horizons.
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