Island
In a hot, unvisited corner it bursts on you
like the last time life was important,
and you know it instantly as if sprung from a dream
headless, crumbling back to white quarry stone
wings furled at its back like great scrolls,
sitting tall and flexing its hams, proud against the sun
and for a radiant moment you see why you've come here
with your straw hat and guidebook
and trailing always the paltry sequences of your life.
Patches of red lichen blister the scattered stones
and almost swaggering in and out of the shade
large grey lizards, muscled like humans, tell of the final return
of men and women banished to die away from the island.
You could be felled by the sun here, your weight breaking the crackly grass.
Page(s) 47
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