Dead

In borrowed clothes, robes my mother told me, swore,

I would grow into wearing, my brother who died in a foreign war

Foreswore his oaths, he is the oat sewn, the cornstalk grown

Tall and golden only to be mowed down gallingly in once-Gaul

He was fair and handsome and beloved by all, the priest recalls

Us in the aisles consoling my bawling mother, my father plundered

Of all thought like a patient under anaesthetic, swaying and patient

Unmoving, stoic, confusion of unheroic death

No one spoke, no one took breath

The church was cold, the depth of their sorrow untold, a black mould upon the soul

The sole heir to their utmost love was now a dove woven from air, afterwards I saw a hare

Staring at me from a tear in the thicket, I have heard they harbour souls from witches

But I saw something switch in it, I chased it until I developed in my side a grim stitch

Ditched and dove and wove, melding into the clover like a woodwose in cover

I swear I swear I swear that hare, swear on my mother, wore the face of me own dead brother.