Inga

Journeying out in maps of all possible places
Brought you young and hopeful to our shore.

His long persuasive fingers under your armpits
Drawing your face towards intimate moss stitch:
Feet afloat on sphagnum gulping sudden fear:
Language leaving you, your throat tightening.

Scots pines, angry uncles impotent
In their yearning for the killing
Not to have been under their shelter.

Straggling summer flowers – honeysuckle, scabious, wild campion –
Incredulous cousins gaping and trembling.
Grasses sighing like distracted aunts.

Parent hills with the names of Knocklayd,
Carnanmore on them, linking
Arms in consolation in the glacial valley.
Pressing their sorrowing heads in cloud.

Far out on the bog in Erica and sundew
A cluster of huge stones
With the hunched shoulders of grave diggers.

Your body among deep green and russet
Lying like a drift of unseasonal snow.

And the sea’s untimely murmuring
Heilige nacht … Heilige nacht.