Severed Head Floating Downriver

It is said that after losing his wife, Orpheus was torn to pieces by Maenads, who threw his head into the River Hebron. The head went on singing and forgetting, filling up with water and floating way. Eurydice already forgetting who she is with her shoes missing and the grass coming up through her feet searching the earth for the bracelet of tiny weave on her charcoal wrist the name of a fly or flower already forgetting who they are they grow they grow till their bodies break their necks down there in the stone world where the grey spirits of stones he around uncertain of their limits matter is eating my mind                                I am in a river I in my fox-cap floating between the speechless reeds I always wake like this being watched already forgetting who I am the water wears my mask I call  I call lying under its lashes like a glance if only a child on a bridge would hoik me out there comes a tremor and there comes a pause down there in the underworld where the tired stones have fallen and the sand in a trance lifts a little it is always midnight in those pools iron insects engraved in sleep I always wake like this being watched I always speak to myself no more myself but a colander draining the sound from this never-to-be mentioned wound can you hear it you with your long shadows and your short shadows can you hear the severed head of Orpheus no I feel nothing from the neck down already forgetting who I am the crime goes on without volition singing in its bone not I not I the water drinks my mind as if in a black suit as if bent to my books only my face exists sliding over a waterfall and there where the ferns hang over the dark and the midges move between mirrors some woman has left her shoes two crumpled mouths which my voice searches in and out my voice being water which holds me together and also carries me away until the facts forget themselves gradually like a contrail and all this week a lime-green hght troubles the riverbed as if the mud was haunted by the wood this is how the wind works hard at thinking this is what speaks when no one speaks