When she left at dawn, no one saw
The black-clad bereaved old woman
Carrying a knife, a loaf of bread,
And a small straw mat
On which they found her babbling
At dusk on a scarred, bare knoll
Overlooking the pockmarked,
Snow-covered landscape, the still
Uncut bread by her side.
A beautiful sentence. I held my breath. And then hung in the air... like that knife.
ReplyDeleteA little mystery with a great mystery wrapped up in it. In the uncut loaf of bread, I think. No words for it, but all your words point in its direction. Beautiful....
ReplyDeleteThanks you two--it's no mystery that most of the time the mystery is in how the poet gets written!
ReplyDeleteA radically different and much smaller version of this one was written in Greek some years ago and when I came upon it last week, I decided to translate it into English and in the process, it turned into an entirely different poem.