IV.
"We"ll be the quicker going down," they say And when you argue there are no storms here, That one hour floating"s sure to land them safely "The lough will claim a victim every year."
2 BEYOND SARGa.s.sO.
A gland agitating
mud two hundred miles in- land, a scale of water on water working up estuaries, he drifted into motion half-way across the Atlantic, sure as the satellite"s insinuating pull in the ocean, as true to his...o...b..t.
Against ebb, current, rock, rapids, a muscled icicle that melts itself longer and fatter, he buries his arrival beyond light and tidal water, investing silt and sand with a sleek root. By day only the drainmaker"s spade or the mud paddler can make him abort. Dark delivers him hungering down each undulation.
3 BAIT.
Lamps dawdle in the field at midnight.
Three men follow their nose in the gra.s.s, The lamp"s beam their prow and compa.s.s.
The bucket"s handle better not clatter now: Silence and curious light gather bait.
Nab him, but wait For the first shrinking, tacky on the thumb.
Let him resettle backwards in his tunnel.
Then draw steady and he"ll come.
Among the millions whorling their mud coronas Under dewlapped leaf and bowed blades A few are bound to be rustled in these night raids, Innocent ventilators of the ground Making the globe a perfect fit, A few are bound to be cheated of it When lamps dawdle in the field at midnight, When fishers need a garland for the bay And have him, where he needs to come, out of the clay.
4 SETTING.
I.
A line goes out of sight and out of mind Down to the soft bottom of silt and sand Past the indifferent skill of the hunting hand.
A bouquet of small hooks coiled in the stern Is being paid out, back to its true form, Until the bouquet"s hidden in the worm.
The boat rides forward where the line slants back.
The oars in their locks go round and round.
The eel describes his arcs without a sound.
II.
The gulls fly and umbrella overhead, Treading air as soon as the line runs out, Responsive acolytes above the boat.
Not sensible of any kyrie, The fishers, who don"t know and never try, Pursue the work in hand as destiny.
They clear the bucket of the last chopped worms, Pitching them high, good riddance, earthy shower.
The gulls encompa.s.s them before the water.
5 LIFTING.
They"re busy in a high boat
That stalks towards Antrim, the power cut.
The line"s a filament of s.m.u.t Drawn hand over fist Where every three yards a hook"s missed Or taken (and the s.m.u.t thickens, wrist- Thick, a flail Lashed into the barrel With one swing). Each eel Comes aboard to this welcome: The hook left in gill or gum, It"s slapped into the barrel numb But knits itself, four-ply, With the furling, slippy Haul, a knot of back and pewter belly That stays continuously one For each catch they fling in Is sucked home like lubrication.
And wakes are enwound as the catch On the morning water: which Boat was which?
And when did this begin?
This morning, last year, when the lough first sp.a.w.ned?
The crews will answer, "Once the season"s in."
6 THE RETURN.
In ponds, drains, dead ca.n.a.ls
she turns her head back, older now, following whim deliberately till she"s at sea in gra.s.s and d.a.m.ned if she"ll stop so it"s new trenches, sunk pipes, swamps, running streams, the lough, the river. Her stomach shrunk, she exhilarates in mid-water. Its throbbing is speed through days and weeks.
Who knows now if she knows her depth or direction?
She"s pa.s.sed Malin and Tory, silent, wakeless, a wisp, a wick that is its own taper and light through the weltering dark.
Where she"s lost once she lays ten thousand feet down in her origins. The current carries slicks of orphaned sp.a.w.n.
7 VISION.
Unless his hair was fine-combed
The lice, they said, would gang up Into a mealy rope And drag him, small, dirty, doomed, Down to the water. He was Cautious then in riverbank Fields. Thick as a birch trunk, That cable flexed in the gra.s.s Every time the wind pa.s.sed. Years Later in the same fields He stood at night when eels Moved through the gra.s.s like hatched fears Towards the water. To stand In one place as the field flowed Past, a jellied road, To watch the eels crossing land Re-wound his world"s live girdle.
Phosph.o.r.escent, sinewed slime Continued at his feet. Time Confirmed the horrid cable.
The Given Note
On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut He got this air out of the night.
Strange noises were heard By others who followed, bits of a tune Coming in on loud weather Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear As unpractised, their fiddling easy For he had gone alone into the island And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.
So whether he calls it spirit music Or not, I don"t care. He took it Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.
Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely, Rephrases itself into the air.
Whinlands
All year round the whin
Can show a blossom or two But it"s in full bloom now.
As if the small yolk stain From all the birds" eggs in All the nests of the spring Were spiked and hung Everywhere on bushes to ripen.
Hills oxidize gold.
Above the smoulder of green shoot And dross of dead thorns underfoot The blossoms scald.
Put a match under Whins, they go up of a sudden.
They make no flame in the sun But a fierce heat tremor Yet incineration like that Only takes the thorn.
The tough sticks don"t burn, Remain like bone, charred horn.
Gilt, jaggy, springy, frilled This stunted, dry richness Persists on hills, near stone ditches, Over flintbed and battlefield.
The Plantation
Any point in that wood