Translation
1 As if a god washed up. As if a god out of the blue, fin-winged, its great horse head wreathed with dark weed 2 and the men came with tools as if for slaughter hacked at the meat, tossed back upon the water’s receding laughter 3 then piled the bones in dung the precious bone let maggots have their say out of the sun for a season 4 dug up, scraped clean, boiled down removing all ribbons of flesh, sinew, the vital oil from spine and skull 5 and the men made a rod the women spun into a helix curve and strung the spine like pearls upon 6 it, so when hoisted up vertically through the sunlit atrium’s translucent blue for all to view 7 it seemed a thing of grace, it seemed a thing swam over us in flight, some fluent being on bone white wing.