Can you hear the singing from inside the church?
Who is singing? Cracked voices, old women?
IS someone lying in the coffin? Has it been emptied,plundered?
Is there someone there, dead bones, clothed in sinews,
dead sinews, grown together with muscles,flesh?

In the sandbox a bird with bloody feathers
is covered with tiny flies.
The bacterial process continues.

The hymn fails silent, the stone bleeds.
The prayers chafe against the stone. The voices chafe
against the prayer. The hymn chafes against the stone.

Translation by Robin Fulton