I can't tell you the terror of being down there.

All those miles of earth on top of me - the stench, the dark -

and him on top, paddling my thin body like a piece of dough.

The worst thing is the trick of memory:

not knowing if you imagined the shape of a mother,

the flimsiness of a dandelion seed, the joy of a feather.

No days there, only nights back to back,

crawling through the underworld like a badger.

He gave me nothing, nothing I tell you,

neither a crust of bread nor a drop of water.

All I had were the six pomegranate seeds

I hid in my pocket that afternoon of my capture.

I fingered them over and over: six little beads of garnet,

eating one at each time of my bleeding.

How I savoured the bittersweet juice,

moist and imagined purple on my tongue.

They were my salvation, my hope, my calendar,

knowing that once they were gone

I would be given the rope to climb back to the sun.

Six tiny pomegranate seeds:

they are the reason I am here, telling you this,

urging you to relish the fresh grass and smell of gorse

and rain and green spike of holly. This:

putting one foot after another in the garlic woods,

listening to skylark and robin and cuckoo song,

gathering fistfuls of pale wild daffodils,

watching hares and deer streak over the chalk hills.

I want you to live it as I do, this renewed miracle of sun on skin,

hedgerows of weddings, camellia blossom in the hair,

confetti of petals on the floor.

I want you to be profligate with your days, your spring,

for this quickening cannot be banked

and no matter how frugal you are

this new life will one day be denied you.

Spend your heart, and eat, eat well the shoots and herbs

and leaves and oranges, save only this:

one pomegranate fruit to take with you as a bait

to recapture the sun when you go down again