Plague
They calm the cavalry
To a canter over the cool
Shallow ford and dreaming
Stones.
One stoops to dip
a flask to be filled,
sweats, grunts; a scent emerges,
It dresses death in sackcloth,
As sparse thatch-work grates
The cold stopped throat
of dirges.
A shy horn bleats
Into the thicket,
So that the sky is peppered
By Nightingales.
This is the wind,
That scatters horse-tail
And dead things,
Taking breath-mist and
Apple core into its
Cool, striated arms of
Loose blue sinew.
Through liquored pores
The smell and ranks
march forward
into the darting spinney,
Piled there are horse-tails and
Dead things.
