You I sing the body Electric the armies of those I love engulf me and I engulf them They will not let me off till I go with them and Discorrupt them and charge them full With the charge of the soul Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves And if those who defile the living are as bad as They who defile the dead and if the body does not do fully as much as the soul and If the body were not the soul What is the soul Come on child come on But I'm transfixed Nailed to the ground as he is to his ory cross naked contorted Tortured Dark you trees sparkle with crystal raindrops this cold Sunday morning Come on, child Ignoring my mother's calls. I push my way through the undergrowth to the base of the crucifix Carved out of the living wood. This Christ has been garishly painted Flesh the color of fairground candy floss his blood gobstopper red He stares down at me Despite the ugly thorns that spike his brow. I imagine I can detect the slightest twist of a smile By standing on tiptoe I'm just able to touch his feet Wearily at first frightened that despite the rusting nails that pierce his body. He might yet move confronts me in my innocence Picking at the pink paintwork a piece peels away exposing the bare wood beneath it is the color of bleached Bending down to pick up this fragment of the body I hear my mother's footsteps close behind me and concerned that she might think I've been involved in an act of youthful vandalism I quickly pocket the flake of paintwork and turn to greet her Looking lovingly upwards. She lays a hand on my head saying with a deep sigh You know Jeremy he died for our sins. I can feel the flake. I see cold between my sweating fingertips Later that summer. I remove a large book from the shelves of my parents library Entitled war the legacy of horror. It has a silver cross embossed on the cover A handwritten letter has been pasted to its first page Darling, I saw things today that no one should ever have to see We had heard of the death camps, but nothing could have prepared us for the reality of them Europe is liberated. But will I ever be free of those terrible images? I feel that something has died within me Oh my love how I long to be with you and little Jeremy I flick through the pages seeking out a body amongst the grainy photographs My parents are in the garden playing on the lawn. The smell of newly cut grass is like fresh blood Against the background of my parents laughter. I search out a body my body Here a picture in which hundreds of dead Christ's lie tangled together in a black and white jigsaw of anonymity Am I here in this terrible pit? This is this me? My parents are tumbling around in the newly cut grass My mother's dress mirroring the flowers of the herbaceous border. She unbuttons my father's shirt and slips it off His body is strong and tanned Oh my love My sweet darling. He whispers taking her in his arms Suddenly I leap to my feet and rush upstairs to my bedroom leaving the book open on the floor In my chest of drawers. I hunt out the fragment of painted flesh that I had peeled from the crucifix I can hear my mother and father giggling in the garden. They roll apart and then together He rises above her and then lowers himself becoming engulfed in the soft cotton of her dress Lost in the folds of it I rush downstairs again the fragment of painted flesh that I had peeled from the crucifix The fragment of painted flesh pinched between my fingertips I stand at the door of the library looking firstly at the black and white photograph on the floor And then out through the window to the sunlight to the garden to my parents It is summer the smell of newly cut grass is like blood Tears streaming down my face I drop to my knees and crawl across the carpet Then placing the candyfloss pink slither of christ's body on the photograph entitled the pits of Auschwitz I close the book And return it to the shelf This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh