My cold sea siren, living eel,
impelled to leave the Baltic and head south
against the current, answering the call
of rivers, estuaries and seas back home,
emerging from the deep once more
to struggle on up tributaries, brooks and trickles,
to attenuate,
to travel ever inward to the heart of solid stone
and wind your way down slicks of mire
until one day
a flash of light through chestnut trees
ignites your dart and wriggle
in the stagnant puddles
of the gullies high up in the Apennines
which tumble all the way down to Romagna;
eel, torchbeam, whiplash, shaft of Love on earth,
whose only route to happy lands
of mating and fertility
is by our ditches and our dried-up mountain streams;
green spirit seeking signs of life
where only drought and desolation bite,
bright spark who says that everything begins
when everything seems burnt to ashes,
buried stick;
brief rainbow, twin to her
whose colours you have framed
within the lashes of your eyes
and caused to shine, immaculate, before the sons of men;
sunk in the mud, your element, can you not recognise
your flesh and blood, your sister in the sky?
