Melusines

Who are you now, ladies,
inhabiting this green space
beyond pain,
pulsing up
and down
in your diaphanous crinolines,

not knowing how greatly
you are reduced – five or six of you
to the length of a sea-cucumber
equally out of its element?

Do you miss your lace parasols,
the young men scissoring their way,
to you across camomile lawns,
the champagne flutes abandoned
at dawn for punting beneath trees,
trailing your hands through water

not knowing you filtered your sisters
through your careless fingers?