I call it my cave, though it is not one;
but piles of rock among intermixed boulders,
oddly placed masses causing space to be
held by mad windows big as doors; passages
in which a man, even one of my height,
must often bend. It's never warm; not safe.
And I live in this dismal capacity,
each pulse failing, as aging animals
withdraw themselves to release meagre spirits
into selfless generalising voids;
or I'm a creature which found itself
its true domain, hidden much of the time
to emerge at half-light for the urgent needs:
feeding, and emptying its body of foul wastes.
They think I'm dead; but all they'd see's a ghost;
or something unembodied, apparently shaped
as a caricature gesticulating
[Elidius is one of the names of one who may have lived at some time after
the Roman period on Scilly, or, as it then seems to have been called,
Ennor. There is no evidence of him apart from the earlier name of St
Helen's island, where it is said he may have been buried, Insula Sancti
Elidii. His feast day is 8th August. Until now he has had no hagiographer. ]
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