By MICHAEL JOYCE

In this island human corpses are not buried and do not putrify, 
    

    but are placed in the open and remain without corruption.

Here men see with some wonder and recognize their grandfathers,
           

           great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers, 
                      

                       and a long line of ancestors.
   

     —Topographia Hiberniae, Giraldus Cambrensis (1220) 


I have seen them in other guises, in dreams or along wind-blown streets here and across the sea

where they go by with a nod or sometimes not, benign or monstrous, familiar passers-by

and now it is I who pass before them where they recline, still upon the rain-polished limestone,

each in his own bed