—a hole opened up and a girl fell through

But the bombs kept falling, and I, face down in beach grass,
felt my fingers clench a final time around what in that moment
I mistook for a young girl’s hair—
                                                    such a delight, the sting in my thigh,
the handful of grass, and the fading

music I thought was planes singing the sky to pieces overhead.

* * *

And remembered a girl I read about who walking in tall grass
slipped into a hole and down,
                                                 her skirt blown out and floral
until she landed in the underground, forgotten
mausoleum. How pretty, like a wisp, a blown and distant
trumpet, curled and white
                                              on the ground, a lightshaft above,
such markings on the walls, indistinguishable. Her legs were
      broken.

* * *

The chord of bombers overhead, and she, below,
                                                                              her skirt around her.

I did not know where the music of the planes was taking me
as, in the distance, the town cried into flame, and I, in the grass

by the shore, and the water leaking over and through. A lock of
     grass
in my palm.

* * *

Sheep bones, dog bones that vanished through the hole.
And in their carved-out niches, the remains of others,
hands folded over their chests, or wrapped.
                                                                 Such snow, the dead sing
to the girl, curled and stunned in her white dress. Down and
     down
.
The bombs are down and down.
                                             And the girl—I couldn’t help imagining,
I couldn’t take myself away, my own legs unmoving

and deranged in the grass—

* * *

and the girl, underground, where she’d fallen, among the bones
of the forgotten, of a flock. And those in their niches, speaking.
We are not, they tell her, what we once were .
                                                                              We have slipped
so gently into quiet. They cannot help but love a girl

* * *

the way they cannot help but love any event.
                                                                         And it was good when,
after they passed, thieves stole their rings. And it was good when
every lamb fell through the hole.
                                                         And the rumble of the plow above
trembled the dead on every ledge. And now

* * *

with the rain and the bombs, such a time
the long dead have of it, who cannot remember
                                                                                    why they died,
who have no rings. The girl weeps on the floor, so they tell her,
beauty, beauty. This is what—

* * *

while she cannot move her legs.
While, above, the fields burned, the houses sighed,
and I could not remove myself from the grass.
                                                                              As I died, the bombs

* * *

blew shaft after shaft of light
                                                    over the bones of those speaking.