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For you who will examine the lower vault:
before the lime, which thickens on the staple
and flowers where the linen enters stone,
can bury the distinction between rust
and what my wrist contributed,
I set down where I was held.
A shoulder’s width of air. The burial shelf
so close I have to turn my cheek
to see the paper.
The staple is a thumb’s length from my pulse.
I can measure what the lamp excludes:
its light stops at the thumb that trims the wick.
The rest of that person does not enter this account.
According to the keeper, who could hear
through the pipe above the burial shelf,
although the shelf cut off the hands,
the evening passed agreeably.
His record gives the hour; the hour is right.
Where he stood, laughter held its shape.
I tested this by whispering against
the linen, stiff with sweat: the softer syllables
went no farther than the knot.
He remembered my breath catching.
He had written a little hook above the word
to show how high it went.
When the touch, lighter than the powder
loosened from a name beneath my back,
travelled the short road under my ribs,
I made a sound the pipe could use.
A click, a hitch, the little running stitch
of breath pulled tight, then tighter.
I held the small word no behind my teeth
while the breath escaped on either side.
The linen rasped; my feet sought purchase
in the white meal under the shelf.
I could not get my heels beneath me.
I counted the fingers. I lost count.
After the hand withdrew, while the wet band
cooled to its old hardness and the narrowed air
tasted of tallow, I practised
the version I could bear to let you hear.
In that one I lay stern beneath the lintel;
my mouth held nothing that could please them.
I tried it twice. The dead
were stacked too close to make a proper audience.
You hear how neatly that one finishes.
I rubbed the page against my knee
until the sentence shone.
Under the rubbed place, paper thinned.
I put the laugh back in.
The pencil catches in the thinning patch.
I have to write around the tear.
Where the linen’s inner fold, unturned
since it was tightened, had begun to part
along the staple’s mineral crust,
I worked a fingernail beneath the hem.
Older thread held darker thread.
A label had been stitched inside the band;
under my number, where the damp had lifted
its replacement, another number showed.
The folded edge had kept the older ink
from coming off on me.
In the keeper’s book—he let me see the column
when I disputed mine—the same hooked mark
rose after each account.
He had been careful. None of the dates was missing.
Because the slit admits a voice
but not the shoulder working at its fastening,
because the band, now flaking, leaves
so little on the skin that I can show,
I begin again: the hand was gentle.
That is accurate.
I hear the keeper’s patience in my pause.
Was it so terrible?
The question held my mouth in readiness.
I had meant to ask whose hand.
From the pipe my breath returned
in the bright, familiar bursts.
Now, while the staple, clothed in its own salt,
keeps the band’s buried portion out of reach,
I tear the loose hem off and pack the pipe.
The small return ceases. I can hear
the dragging of my sleeve against the stone.
I no longer hear the keeper turn his page.
What I have written stays beneath my knee.
To read it you must put your cheek
where mine has polished the limestone.
The cloth that held me has swollen in the pipe.
Work your finger underneath the edge.
A little rust comes off.
There is another fold
beyond the reach of your nail.