Mouth Bow
I
You place the tip across your mouth
hold it still, the shaped beechwood
sliver of a new moon’s edge in your hand.
Between your fingers
the flat oval of bone.
A touch, resting. Then – pluck the strung gut.
***
It sings in his head.
Twang. Then
a deep honeywarm drone
struck through his whole shattered being
as if his soul is speaking to itself
of a creature sleeping in a cave of bone
dreaming it is a man
who dreams he is not.
***
Meanwhile the mouth moves
like an animal trying to escape its trap
writhing a grimace of articulation
through the slowly woven web of harmonics
the delicate strings of tangled sound
that hold it fast as it struggles to break free
to flee the snare
to speak its song.
II
Let the eye sharpen
let the gaze narrow along a smoothed shaft
to the chiselled point
let alignment pause as the lips purse
their one, pure note
eased out
in a slow unfolding ripple of air
the surefire slipstream of the bright blade of sound.
Dead
shot.
Let the song free
let the arrow fly
***
Drumming in the hooves of the herds on the grassland.
***
That leap across this cave wall to the music of arrows
where the figure dances to the thumb-struck string
to the ghost- song breathed through the flute of bone.
That gives my breath its word
its bright blade.
***
O poetry
O bloody song of the hunter.
David Calcutt is Writer in Residence at Caldmore Community Garden. And author of Crowboy, Shadow Bringer and The Map of Marvels: Oxford University Press, and Robin Hood: Barefoot Books http://davidcalcutt.com/about/. The Old Man in the House of Bone is published by V Press.