TEMPLE ENCLOSURE

           Wood pigeon song from the thickets of my love

           grows ghostly with time.

           On that ploughed hillside

           an island of grasses

           and five ivied hornbeams

           stood against a furrowed sea

           with mysterious intent.

           I knelt before a man-orchid,

           its yellow bodies hanging beneath me,

           wind urging them this way and that,

           a flower I was later to learn

           was aceras anthropophorum:

           curiosity crumbled into fact.

           My sister and I discovered the island together,

           but ever afterwards it was my place.

           There was buried treasure, I knew -

           not of the kind you dig up,

           but of the kind your mind fondles.

           My hand round a rope of ivy knew

           there was something here besides hornbeams,

           grasses and orchids, something I could worship -

           But why?  There were no gods here,

           I thought.  What was buried in the pigeon call

           and the dancing yellow manikins?

           What was buried under a staring sun

           on a June childhood afternoon?