Deposits
I’ve ducked under dim electric bulbs,
stared through grilles into backless passages,
a long way in under the mountain.
The guide switches off the lights;
space weighs in, light as the heart of a soap-bubble,
a waterfall haunts like an unexamined god.
Pale torch-light finds a row of grinning stalactites;
while he slips in ‘metamorphic,’ ‘quaternary,’
we picture floods and volcanoes;
he names a tiny fern
lodged high up in the darkness,
enumerates species that left bones here
and I think about a Stone Age child
awake in an echoing labyrinth
while the family breathes round her.
I’ve ducked under dim electric bulbs,
stared through grilles into backless passages,
a long way in under the mountain.
The guide switches off the lights;
space weighs in, light as the heart of a soap-bubble,
a waterfall haunts like an unexamined god.
Pale torch-light finds a row of grinning stalactites;
while he slips in ‘metamorphic,’ ‘quaternary,’
we picture floods and volcanoes;
he names a tiny fern
lodged high up in the darkness,
enumerates species that left bones here
and I think about a Stone Age child
awake in an echoing labyrinth
while the family breathes round her.