As I doze on a warm afternoon
a shadowy bird hovers over me,
peeling dream-images
out of the vault of a skull
in a skin of damp leaves.
A sun-dappled meadow appears -
flaxen grasses, autumnal Thessaly,
monk-like cypresses, gate-keepers
to a rustic white church,
lichen bronzing its belfry.
A silent guide conducts me
to the ossuary, where bones lie strewn,
spilled from their caskets,
skulls all yellowing, fragile
as antique ivory or parchment.
I am alone with the nameless dead
who spoke other tongues, and I have
no idea who they were, who they loved,
how they met their deaths:
no inkling of what lives they led.
The shadow follows me back
across the meadow, a bird of prey,
the spectre of Byzantium's eagle
warning the stranger away.