Who are you when your people are gone?
A name not suffixed or prefixed,
a soul at no fixed abode.
How are we anchored to docks and harbours
rolling on tide surfing out, pitching us
in towards mud and to face departing silence?
And when they no longer hear or make sound,
how do we falter; tree chopped down, floated
along empty rivers, drowned and cold.
No speech can replace those people
lost and cold; not to peace or quiet
but to history, old and irrelevant.
So sit in stillness, and wait again
for the freezing surge to grip your ankles
and say a final farewell to all goodbyes.
Book of Pye 