The Wood of the Suicides

I’d found myself in a forest, trackless, lit
by shadows. Flashback: tumbling into sleep,
slumped on a book where Nessus hadn’t yet

returned to the other side I woke to trip
headlong through thorns and dark leaves in some savage
thicket of multiplying authorship –

and just as a dream’s blurred overlay can merge
disparate loves: translations, parallel text,
commentary, imitations all converge

on the place I wandered, terrified, perplexed
where harpies…make lament on the strange trees
and pain severed in one life grafts the next.

Barely a few steps on, the gloom was worse –
everywhere wailing, indistinct as air
until a voice broke off: ‘I’d recognise

that slouching faux-detachment anywhere.
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