{"id":323,"date":"2011-07-22T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=323"},"modified":"2011-07-22T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-22T17:00:00","slug":"nancy-campbells-the-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/nancy-campbells-the-cemetery\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Campbell's 'The Cemetery'"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cemetery<\/span>

We settled here, scarcely believing our fortune,<\/span>
no more to scull the seas. The island was safe but<\/span>
there were many deaths: driven by the darkness <\/span>
men killed their kin; others drowned in shallow water <\/span>

before they could reach the sea. The island was safe but <\/span>
there was no earth to cultivate, nowhere to bury those men<\/span>
killed by their kin. Bodies float in shallow water. <\/span>
Corpses were left to rot, covered in rocks to hinder beasts:<\/span>

there was no earth to hold them. Where could we hide the dead<\/span>
when mad men were buried alive on the highest rock? <\/span>
We left them there to die, smothered with stones to keep them still; <\/span>
the winter was their warder. Snow blew over the bones<\/span>

of young men buried alive on the highest rock.<\/span>
The ice on those cairns was as good as a key in a lock:<\/span>
the winter, their warder. Wind blew between the stones <\/span>
and if sometimes it sounded like a man crying to be free<\/span>

the ice on each cairn was as good as a key in a lock.<\/span>
And so we settled, scarcely believing our fortune,<\/span>
although it might sound as if we were crying to be free,<\/span>
crying for death to deliver us from darkness.<\/span>



*Nancy Campbell<\/a><\/span>'s latest book is <\/span>How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic: An Arctic alphabet<\/span>. Nancy was writer in residence at Upernavik Museum, Greenland in 2010. <\/span>



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The CemeteryWe settled here, scarcely believing our fortune,no more to scull the seas. The island was safe butthere were many deaths: driven by the darkness men killed their kin; others drowned in shallow water before they could reach the sea. The island was safe but there was no earth to cultivate, nowhere to bury those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}