shuffling across the carpark from the pool in my dry robe
like a damp, disconsolate Cistercian, I heard them,
two peacocks: their proclamations launched wide into the
whites of the Cumbrian sky, their maladroit plainsongcutting
up the backdrop of chaffinch after chaffinch and as iffrom
nowhere, two peacocks: (stately home dropouts? heritage
park rejects?) with a message from beyond or with no
message but voluble on matters unfathomable and in the
darkness of my cabin with my shut-up grief and neural
scramble, what a boon to hear the boundlessness of those
two peacocks: broadcasting in peacock across the night
