I

We stood in the main doorway
according to the custom of important days
(usually marked by the village priest)
with holy water dripping from dry basil
but now recorded in the slow turn of hinges):
Come back, you said, I will, I said.

You stored the coffers with my dowry
and we walked to the station before dawn.

The moon whitened the crossing of dirt roads
spread like open palms.

II

When I learned the new language
and abandoned the old one,
I practiced pronouncing new words
and felt new in their newness
but your knitted pullover always gives me away.

When leaves turned their backs in storms
I sat imagining that I was a child by the sea
whistling through a flute made of cornstalk.

Once I saw you in the crisscross of afternoon sunlight,
lighting a candle under stained glass—
a heart beating under the ribs of a city
you will never see.

The church orchestra practiced for Evensong
and something in me, like the breath released
from the throat of the flute escaped:
I mattered to no one there.

III

This morning I awoke to the sound
of birds inside of the yellow of gorse bushes,
the hands of hills are in the sea,
Tory island is a boat without sails.
You whisper to me from hawthorns and hazels,
the earth will remember you.

Your wooden cross appears to me
through the rain washing the cemetery.
I want to walk around your grave
three times, light incense and a candle
inside the rusted bottomless bucket
lodged in the earth next to your head.