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The Book of Sheep

Seen from faraway, they are stones that move.
Close up they are scholars, with that steadfast focus,
that diligence, poring over a vast green manuscript,
a book of hours they faithfully scribe,
working in the fine detail,
each blade of grass, each segment of gold leafed light.

Such dazzling illuminations are offset by the sweep
of turning pages, of unsettling shadows,
the days spinning by like a shoal of clouds,
dark acres rolling across,
incessant downpours drenching their labours
with pools of sudden, puzzling depths
until the broken arch of a rainbow is revealed.

The book takes all their lives to consume and ponder,
to revise and recreate. It consumes them
as they crimp away in a daze of interpretation,
dropping stops all over the ground
of their endeavours, lost in a trail of footnotes.

Their absorption is steady. They seldom rest.
But sometimes a head is raised to pause
for a moment of reflection, or to stare
at whatever catches their eye beyond the margin
of their work. There are disputes too,
differences of opinion erupting across the wide air,
dry chuckles of derision, a chorus of dissent,
or even a brief monologue of despair.

Poor scholars, to us it is a miserable devotion
but they seem indifferent to all their sorrows:
hobbling with foot rot or joints stiff as wood;
swollen with bloat; bearing ticks that bloom
like berries; riddled with worms that barber
the ruched, intestinal flesh, drawing the life out of them;
knowing no rest from the swarming itch of scab;
the grass staggers fizzing in their brains like sherbert,
a slow explosion of stained glass.

Move towards them and some will shuffle away
With lowered heads, along an invisible tunnel
where they think they cannot be found
and always there are one or two
later to be discovered head down in a stream
turning into a slow work of decay. Otherwise,
they remain where they are,
looking at you as if you were an incoming sea,
a final dark wave rolling over them,
an ending they accept, that they cannot change.

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