Formerly

 
Shyly, the lady of the spheres uncurled her fingers
Patted the sopping earth with her hand
The pilgrims stopped at her feet to bask slivers
Of her skin upon their heads dusting the sand
That gathered on their eyelashes acquired
From the desert and its sunless dunes
When gales wrung themselves still as conspired
And the rain simmered indignant until soots
Caked the ruffles of the megalopolis and
Its manufactories and its banknotes and, and

His body was wrapped in a blanket, his head
Raw-boned and spotted, his glassy eyes stared
Into the light he could not see, he could not feel
For he had died and the pilgrims broken, they keen
And their voices remind me of that they call formerly
Like the certainty of rain when the swallows soar
Or the colour of mangoes when ripen, ready
So sweet, that they call formerly was the life of
These, these pilgrims, meandering away from city
Pallor and lifeless life, who mourn the colonisation of, of