9—le ressouvenir

this is owed, in the recollection of things
the precarious accounting of confessions
and their alleged crimes—your graces,

i did not mean to murder my brother

this i want known, remembered most,
that i have loved such simple splendour
as the voices of children, welcoming me

when i was most lost, near the end of this life
having forgotten the golden sunlight like a lover
lain upon the lush green fields of cane, at dawn

each harvest season at Albion, as if the world were
forever recreating itself afresh, amnesiac, anew
who then knew, or cared even,
which gods were false, which true?

what mattered most was blood
and this sweetness hard-wrought
by bone and sharp ringing steel
from the earth’s brown bosom