Samboo's Grave at Sunderland Point (revision 2017)

Samboo's Grave at Sunderland Point

Let us not arrive on our deathbeds knowing

that we should have done more, that we

should have listened more closely

to our hearts—Madeleine Shine

On our deathbeds we will cry to have it back,

this wasted time—Alice Aforethought

creeps of sunlight over the salt-marsh
there in the wind from over without
Barrow and Overton, from here to there
up the Irish Sea the overfalls sing
then all out southward freaks of wind

curving in eastward on the intent, the raptor
look of it (in 3D—look again, Samboo

(bells everywhere—what bells?
nothing left below only a tiny skeleta)
your mother dead on the beaches, the bone-beaches

of the endless western Afrique; far-off the sluff and slough
the gold and the kohl the markets of Cathay and Shendy
for this for this, you here, you here—why here?
all of it, ten thousand years in the marram the cow-heads narrow ring
and no homecoming—just this loneliness
just this violation of the co-opting into everyone's dream
everyone who came here to stamp (and steam)

like cattle about your little garden of squashes
pumpkin-head boy from the meridian lands
sleeping soft and lonely beneath below and black
of beyond—and how was it done, Samboo, was it just a wheelbarrow
some seaman's cart; no gymkhana plumage, no funeral cortège
only the function, the deposition, the sediment
the geology of the placement of a little black heart, deceased
there at the wind's wild edge where it mattered most and least

dislocked now from his beach-heart and heave-head
trampled a thousand over, Samboo universal Samboo
weeps soft over the haunted bay
whirls thrice through the cockles
lingers a moment like a ghostly Susan
then thinks again, then is gone
here, spirit, here … we have caught your soul and you

are forever our little semantic boy
all in pieces and scatters underground
squashed and overarching—how little and lost and longing, all of it
how tiny and lost and ferocious
down there Samboo, down there in the warm and endless cold
where your mother gulfs across all of time
some great universal choke

where is my mind?

across all of this, swooping bells, worlds of light

.