I felt
the plangent reverberation in the meadow.
It did not issue from the tall slate spire
I glimpsed through webby extreme reaches of the coppice.
Narrow, proud, fierce, humble, compassionate,
the spire dimming in the
thickening distance softening through vapors
which so constructed me that I felt
them move in liquid heart and brain.
I knew
what Ringa knew, what
Cleo knew, what Ringa felt quivered
like freshly peeled sentient flesh flayed,
devoured, flaunted the towering fact:
the Countess was dead.