Her frail breath calls through the quickening hours:
‘My body is broken, make up my bed,
a deep cup of reed leaves lined with reed flowers,
feathers and flickers beyond human powers
and cram it with anguish when I am dead.’
Her frail breath calls through the quickening hours:
‘Furnish with letters, my Saint Christopher’s
medal, an unleavened morsel of bread,
a deep cup of reed leaves lined with reed flowers.’
A creature of proud civility cowers.
The elegant brain has ruptured and bled.
Her frail breath calls through the quickening hours:
‘Is life a race of unmerciful hours
to capture with toil, with furious dread,
a deep cup of reed leaves lined with reed flowers?’
A reedling weaves space from whispering towers:
a grail for white eggs, for wings of soft red.
Her frail breath calls through the quickening hours
a deep cup of reed leaves lined with reed flowers.
