Over the dead man's house, over his landscape
the frozen air was a scrawny psalm
I believed in, because it was pagan
as he wa.s
Into the minister's voice
spread a pollution of bad beliefs.
The sanctimonious dwindled away
over the boring, beautiful sea.
The sea was boring, as grief is,
but beautiful, as grief is not.
Through grief's dark ugliness I saw that beauty
because he would have.
And that darkened the ugliness ... Can the dead
help? I say so. Because, a year later,
that sanctimonious voice is silent and the pagan
landscape is sacred in a new way