Island

Gold, they say, in and under these jagsof quartzite, gold and a manfrom outside seeking to mine it. Turnedback one path, he finds another.

The sphagnum moss that was harvestedas a stancher of wounds,a painkiller and an antiseptic, and sentto the Front during the Great War,

of no account, the cormorant standingwith its wings open to the sunlost forever, the tourist boat next to the pierallowed to rot, the stories told

in the accent and idiom of a peoplewiped out—the world destined, it seems,to mesh with megalopolis, allcultures rendered the steam of one pot.