Dreaming Of The Bones

Looking back at the poems spread before her, Gemma said hesitantly, “You know I’m not a poet, and I haven’t been to university. But I’ve been reading Vic’s manuscript, and as many of Lydia’s poems as I could find, and I think Vic was right. These poems are different. There’s a feeling of urgency, and a directness to them that the earlier poems don’t have.” She frowned as she touched the sheets on the table, then separated one poem from the rest. “They seem to begin with a more general feeling, a theme. Listen to this one.” Settling back in her chair, she began to read with careful diction.

“They have taken my voice

severed tongue at the roots

sucked anger away like breath

stolen from the mouths of babes

“In the beginning was the word

but it was not ours

they left us only the

whispers of our mingled blood.

“And yet we participate willingly

in the conspiracy of our loss

passing this mute legacy

our gift to our daughters.”

Gemma looked up at him as she finished. Searching his face, she shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? But I feel it—here.” She pressed her fist to the center of her chest. “It’s about women not speaking up, not having voices, and yet we teach our daughters the same behavior. Do you see?”

“I think so. But what has that to do—”

“Wait. As the poems go on the theme seems to become more specific, until you get to this one, the last. Listen. It’s called ‘Awaiting Electra.’

Ancient laughter stirs in the deep

heart of the dimly remembered green

wood by the close and

sacrificial Pool.

The poets wait in uneasy slumber

for her coming

their feet whisper on the leaf-thick

path and the old pulse

quickens in the dappled light.

Silver slides over the

bell of her hair over

the innocent landscape of

her skin and she smiles as

they ease her down into

the dark water waiting.

She feels the wild springing freedom

then the old fear, the truth of it

sudden and piercing as a child’s rape.

Lost to years, she lies forgotten

betrayed in the mallow-tangles

of the still black summer.

Who will speak for her now? Truth

unmourned, untold in the ice heart

of our memory?”

Gemma’s reading had grown more halting as she progressed through the poem, and now she stared at the page until the print blurred and the words began to shift and scramble. It was odd, she thought as she noticed the hair standing up on her forearms, that the words made her feel things which went beyond words. But there was something more here even than that, she was sure of it, if she could just sort it out… She looked up at Kincaid. “She’s telling a story, isn’t she?”

“I suppose you could say all poems tell stories; they’re a way of assimilating our experiences.” He tapped the page. “This one is probably a metaphor for coming of age, the loss of virginity—”

“No, no”—Gemma shook her head—“I mean, she’s telling a story about something that really happened. The beginning reminds me of the things I’ve been reading about Rupert Brooke and his friends swimming naked in Byron’s Pool—-the poets’ pool, do you see? There’s this feeling of tingling anticipation about it—but then something happens, something dark and unexpected—”

“Gemma, don’t you think that’s a bit far-fetched?”

“Is it? Lydia is dead. Vic is dead. And someone wanted these poems. Just because Nathan had them doesn’t mean that Vic’s killer wasn’t searching for them.” She stared at him, and after a moment he nodded.

“Go on, then.”

Slowly, speaking aloud as she thought, Gemma said, “Strip away the images. What does she tell us happens? Think like a policeman—find the bare bones.”

Kincaid frowned and ran a hand through his hair. “There’s a rape. A child’s rape.” He slid the page across the table, turning it his way up. “But she doesn’t actually say—”

“She only suggests it. But she tells us that a girl goes to a pool in the woods where the poets are waiting for her.” Gemma retrieved the page. “She’s naked—”

“Virginal—”

“They take her into the pool—”

“Rape her—”