Unremembered
by Sarah Kirkland Snider
Poems by Nathaniel Bellows
Prelude
Someone breathed into my ear
The vapor of the dead
It woke me up, I was asleep
It circled round my head
It all comes back inchoate
The meaning has no base
I never learned to love someone
The way I did that place
The Estate
Down past the River Road
In the lowest hollow
I took the path along the row
No stranger dared to follow
The wide lawn was overgrown
The eaves were bowed and brown
The window showed that every room
Was bare and white as bone
Above the pool, a mirrored gaze
I saw her ivied face
Her empty eyes, cold, recessed
Have watched this wasted place
Where dying bloom and creeping vine
Strangle and adorn
The place that built inside of me
A soul, a ghost, a home
The field has breath, the pond a voice
I’ve known since I was small
They told me then to leave this place
Or stay and lose it all
The Slaughterhouse
The house, a house of stone
With a concrete floor
A ring stuck at its, at its center
Up the hill from the pond
We’d skate on every winter
Every winter
Every winter
In the past these family farms
Slaughtered all their stock
I’d seen it once at another farm
And I never will forget
And I never will forget
Never will forget
The ring was used
To hold them still
The nose ring in the ring
The pond was there
To drag them down
Dead but still bleeding
Dead but still bleeding
The ring was there
To hold them still
The pond was there
To drag them down
Down
Why hadn’t they torn it down
When the farms, farms no longer, longer thrived?
Beneath our blades a reef of beasts
Lay lowing under ice
Under ice
Under ice
The Speakers
“I’m sorry”
“I’m sorry”
“I’m sorry” said the blade
Poised above the hare
“The life you have inside of you
Is only yours to share”
“In some ways,” said the night
As it blotted out the day
“The fact that you will soon return
Makes your death a sadder thing”
“I hear you” said the hay
The soured, dusty straw
“You are the holy, crying child
The world believes is gone”
“Leave it” said the leaf
“The edge of me turns brown
I die and rise invisibly
Like the ghosts you won’t allow”
The Girl
The woods behind that sprawling farm
Above that ranging home
Was somewhere no one ever went
Unless to be alone
The wren would sing, the grouse would fly
A fox a flash of red
A peaceful place of moss and flowers
In an untouched woven bed
Who was that girl that entered there
Who crossed that thorny turf?
She brought with her just rope and will
We did not know her face or name
Just rendered in our minds
But the birds would sing the strangest song
As we rode by on our bikes
The River
On the banks
The wash so brown
The shadows blue
They’re black
I saw the form
Astride the loam
Splayed out upon
Its back
A bear, a dog
A bed, a log
A child’s eyes
Are pure
Until the hands
Of the missing man
Were clear against the
Were clear against the
Clear against the dew
On the banks
The wash so brown
The shadows blue
They’re black
I saw the form
Astride the loam
Splayed out upon
Its back
The river’s flow
A blackened bow
That tied around
Our town
Had sapped his life
Like a lantern’s light
Buried under
Buried under
Buried underground
On the banks
On the banks
On the banks
The wash so brown
The shadows blue
They’re black
Black
Black
Black