BERGSGROTTAN: MORKO, SWEDEN

1.

She says: Lyssna. And you listen
without knowing what to hear.

Still, you hear it. All the summer
sounds, of birds and crickets,

and the wind, have all been deleted
by the granite. Ah, Lisbeth ...

But she says again: Lyssna ...
There is another way of listening.

2.

There are other songs to sing,
and other rituals yet to be enacted:

that resonance of the space ...
She is standing near the entrance

to the cavern, silhouetted
by the sun's light. This language

of her body is more open
than the language of your mind.

---

ONCE BITTER...

The first one was by numbers-
thatched cottages and a rickety hay-cart.

Her second was of the hut
we stayed in when we fished the Ruakituri.

The fig-tree was the problem:
Looks like a peacock, I reckon Dad said

and we laughed about it,
unaware of aspiration shelved for good ...

Years later, coming home
from some mediocre local art exhibition

he ferreted out the paints
and produced an exquisite little landscape-

That's how it's done.
It was his only one and we admired it,

not noticing Mum's silence
in that colourless year before her death.