Oh No, Not My Baby by John Burnside

But who is this other, waiting in the dark,
the one she listens for?
No ordinary man, but Brother Bones
calling to her in whispers from a place
she's known since girlhood: miles of perfect snow
to cancel out the fever of a body.
What treasured story makes her love the cold?
Some hallowed father, hunting in the blood?
Old wives-and-mothers, stiched along the marrow?

Everyone wants to tempt Providence, but she was lost
before we knew that lost was possible
and something in the woods, unkempt
and knowing, not
one body, but an undivided host
of looks and cries was waiting for its time
to drag her down, in some exquisite fall
to icebound realms
of hyacinth and vellum.

Sliding away in dreams she had rehearsed
for years, that tomboy sweetness in her face
of one struck dumn with awe, she shed her veils
in endless rounds of theme and variation,
but everything she touched returned to dust
and scattered to the wind as, at the end,
she scattered from my hands, no longer hurt
so beautifully, she seemed more song than woman.

[from: Black Cat Bone]