In the Goddess’s Name I Summon You. . .

Oil on limbs, maybe a rancid smell as on the chapel’s oil-press here, as on the rough pores of the unturning stone. Oil on hair wreathed in rope and maybe other scents unknown to us poor and rich and statuettes offering small breasts with their fingers. Oil in the sun the leaves shuddered when the stranger stopped and the silence weighed between the knees. The coins fell: ‘In the goddess’s name I summon you...’ Oil on the shoulders and the flexing waist legs grass-dappled, and that wound in the sun as the bell rang for vespers as I spoke in the churchyard with a crippled man.