Kamikaze and exposure

• Her father embarked at sunrise with a flask of water, a samurai sword
• shaven head full of powerful incantations
• like a huge flag waved first one way then the other in a figure of eight
• the loose silver of whitebait and once a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous
• only we children still chattered and laughed, until gradually we too learned to be silent
• and sometimes, she said, he must have wondered which had been the better way to die
• our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us
• wearied, we keep awake because the night is silent
• dawn massing in the east her melancholy army attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey
• so we drowse, sun dozed, littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses - is it that we are dying
• therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born for love of god seems dying
• pause over half known faces. all their eyes are ice, but nothing happens