The old drainage trench had once been a stream, long
before the huts were knocked down and the overlords
began building their houses of stone. Rubble and foul
silts formed the banks, crawling with vermin. But there
in my chest some dark fire flamed in quiet rage as I
walked the track seeking the lost voice, the voice of that
freed watery flow, the pebbles beneath the streaming tongue.
Oh I knew so well those smooth stones, the child’s treasure
of comforting form and the way, when dried, a single
drop of tear or rain could make the colour blossom
once more the found recollection of its home – this
child’s treasure and the child was me and the treasure
was mine, and mine own child this very morning I
discovered, kneeling smeared on the rotting bank
playing with shards of broken pots that knew only
shades of grey no matter how deep and how streaming
these tears.
Before Trate
Nameless Fent
(MT, UK Trade, p.435)