Unless forgiveness finds its nerve and voice, Unless the helmeted and bleeding tree Can green and open buds like infants" fists And the fouled magma incubate Bright nymphs ... My people think money And talk weather. Oil-rigs lull their future On single acquisitive stems. Silence Has shoaled into the trawlers" echo-sounders.
The ground we kept our ear to for so long Is flayed or calloused, and its entrails Tented by an impious augury.
Our island is full of comfortless noises."
III AT THE WATER"S EDGE
On Devenish I heard a snipe
And the keeper"s recital of elegies Under the tower. Carved monastic heads Were crumbling like bread on water.
On Boa the G.o.d-eyed, s.e.x-mouthed stone Socketed between graves, two-faced, trepanned, Answered my silence with silence.
A stoup for rain water. Anathema.
From a cold hearthstone on Horse Island I watched the sky beyond the open chimney And listened to the thick rotations Of an army helicopter patrolling.
A hammer and a cracked jug full of cobwebs Lay on the window-sill. Everything in me Wanted to bow down, to offer up, To go barefoot, foetal and penitential, And pray at the water"s edge.
How we crept before we walked! I remembered The helicopter shadowing our march at Newry, The scared, irrevocable steps.
The Toome Road
One morning early I met armoured cars
In convoy, warbling along on powerful tyres, All camouflaged with broken alder branches, And headphoned soldiers standing up in turrets.
How long were they approaching down my roads As if they owned them? The whole country was sleeping.
I had rights-of-way, fields, cattle in my keeping, Tractors. .h.i.tched to buckrakes in open sheds, Silos, chill gates, wet slates, the greens and reds Of outhouse roofs. Whom should I run to tell Among all of those with their back doors on the latch For the bringer of bad news, that small-hours visitant Who, by being expected, might be kept distant?
Sowers of seed, erectors of headstones ...
O charioteers, above your dormant guns, It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pa.s.s, The invisible, untoppled omphalos.
A Drink of Water
She came every morning to draw water
Like an old bat staggering up the field: The pump"s whooping cough, the bucket"s clatter And slow diminuendo as it filled, Announced her. I recall Her grey ap.r.o.n, the pocked white enamel Of the br.i.m.m.i.n.g bucket, and the treble Creak of her voice like the pump"s handle.
Nights when a full moon lifted past her gable It fell back through her window and would lie Into the water set out on the table.
Where I have dipped to drink again, to be Faithful to the admonishment on her cup, Remember the Giver, fading off the lip.
The Strand at Lough Beg in memory of Colum McCartney All round this little island, on the strand
Far down below there, where the breakers strive,
Grow the tall rushes from the oozy sand.
Dante, Purgatorio, I, 100103 Leaving the white glow of filling stations And a few lonely streetlamps among fields You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton Past the Fews Forest, out beneath the stars Along that road, a high, bare pilgrim"s track Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads, Goat-beards and dogs" eyes in a demon pack Blazing out of the ground, snapping and squealing.
What blazed ahead of you? A faked roadblock?
The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun?
Or in your driving mirror, tailing headlights That pulled out suddenly and flagged you down Where you weren"t known and far from what you knew: The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg, Church Island"s spire, its soft treeline of yew.
There you once heard guns fired behind the house Long before rising time, when duck shooters Haunted the marigolds and bulrushes, But still were scared to find spent cartridges, Acrid, bra.s.sy, genital, ejected, On your way across the strand to fetch the cows.
For you and yours and yours and mine fought shy, Spoke an old language of conspirators And could not crack the whip or seize the day: Big-voiced scullions, herders, feelers round Hayc.o.c.ks and hindquarters, talkers in byres, Slow arbitrators of the burial ground.
Across that strand of yours the cattle graze Up to their bellies in an early mist And now they turn their unbewildered gaze To where we work our way through squeaking sedge Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge Honed bright, Lough Beg half-shines under the haze.
I turn because the sweeping of your feet Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees With blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes, Then kneel in front of you in br.i.m.m.i.n.g gra.s.s And gather up cold handfuls of the dew To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.
I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.
With rushes that shoot green again, I plait Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.
Casualty
I.
He would drink by himself And raise a weathered thumb Towards the high shelf, Calling another rum And blackcurrant, without Having to raise his voice, Or order a quick stout By a lifting of the eyes And a discreet dumb-show Of pulling off the top; At closing time would go In waders and peaked cap Into the showery dark, A dole-kept breadwinner But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner, Sure-footed but too sly, His deadpan sidling tact, His fisherman"s quick eye And turned, observant back.
Incomprehensible To him, my other life.
Sometimes, on his high stool, Too busy with his knife At a tobacco plug And not meeting my eye, In the pause after a slug He mentioned poetry.
We would be on our own And, always politic And shy of condescension, I would manage by some trick To switch the talk to eels Or lore of the horse and cart Or the Provisionals.
But my tentative art His turned back watches too: He was blown to bits Out drinking in a curfew Others obeyed, three nights After they shot dead The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said, BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday Everybody held Their breath and trembled.
II.
It was a day of cold Raw silence, windblown Surplice and soutane: Rained-on, flower-laden Coffin after coffin Seemed to float from the door Of the packed cathedral Like blossoms on slow water.
The common funeral Unrolled its swaddling band, Lapping, tightening Till we were braced and bound Like brothers in a ring.
But he would not be held At home by his own crowd Whatever threats were phoned, Whatever black flags waved.
I see him as he turned In that bombed offending place, Remorse fused with terror In his still knowable face, His cornered outfaced stare Blinding in the flash.
He had gone miles away For he drank like a fish Nightly, naturally Swimming towards the lure Of warm lit-up places, The blurred mesh and murmur Drifting among gla.s.ses In the gregarious smoke.
How culpable was he That last night when he broke Our tribe"s complicity?
"Now you"re supposed to be An educated man,"
I hear him say. "Puzzle me The right answer to that one."
III.
I missed his funeral, Those quiet walkers And sideways talkers Shoaling out of his lane To the respectable Purring of the hea.r.s.e ...
They move in equal pace With the habitual Slow consolation Of a dawdling engine, The line lifted, hand Over fist, cold sunshine On the water, the land Banked under fog: that morning When he took me in his boat, The screw purling, turning Indolent fathoms white, I tasted freedom with him.
To get out early, haul Steadily off the bottom, Dispraise the catch, and smile As you find a rhythm Working you, slow mile by mile, Into your proper haunt Somewhere, well out, beyond ...
Dawn-sniffing revenant, Plodder through midnight rain, Question me again.
Badgers
When the badger glimmered away
into another garden you stood, half-lit with whiskey, sensing you had disturbed some soft returning.
The murdered dead, you thought.
But could it not have been some violent shattered boy nosing out what got mislaid between the cradle and the explosion, evenings when windows stood open and the compost smoked down the backs?
Visitations are taken for signs.
At a second house I listened for duntings under the laurels and heard intimations whispered about being vaguely honoured.
And to read even by carca.s.ses the badgers have come back.
One that grew notorious lay untouched in the roadside.
Last night one had me braking but more in fear than in honour.
Cool from the sett and redolent of his runs under the night, the bogey of fern country broke cover in me for what he is: pig family and not at all what he"s painted.
How perilous is it to choose not to love the life we"re shown?
His st.u.r.dy dirty body and interloping grovel.