Silence

The sister wept and said: "But can't you be set free?" "Oh no,' they said. "There is a way, but it's too hard. You'd have to go without speaking or laughing for six years… If a single word crossed your lips, all your pains would be wasted.'
Words — which had burdened her — welled up,
trembling, then drained from her mouth: as if it were
an eye emptying every last tear.
Now she could see freshly. Falling back
against the silence of grass, lying wrapped in
its crystal cloak, she looked up through blackness,
communed with stars — as if distance made them
her companions: miniscule pearls printing
lips, fingertips, with a map of perverse hope.
Space rippled out from her — a magic moat,
vertiginous gulf. Day after moonlit day
she tracked the elusive shapes of firefly,
hummingbird, moth — refiguring the world
then dreaming herself back inside it…
At the clearing's heart, her burial shroud.
She walks through a wall of sulphur smoke
till her toes touch orange shadows pulsing
like ghosts over embers. In the nerves and veins
of her neck she can hear them — a line of swans
breaking up, crying out, as they enter
the circle of burnt stars around her:
falling back into time, to find themselves
wearing hose again and hair, velour doublets —
and shirts woven from flowers, from buried speech.