Whatever light the G.o.ddess had once shone Around her favourite coming from the bath Was what was needed then: there should have been Fresh linen, ministrations by attendants, Procession and amazement. Instead, she took Each rolled elastic stocking and drew it on Like the life she would not fail and was not Meant for. And once, when she"d scoured the basin, She came and sat to please us on the swing, Neither out of place nor in her element, Just tempted by it for a moment only, Half-retrieving something half-confounded.
Instinctively we knew to let her be.
To start up by yourself, you hitched the rope Against your backside and backed on into it Until it tautened, then tiptoed and drove off As hard as possible. You hurled a gathered thing From the small of your own back into the air.
Your head swept low, you heard the whole shed creak.
We all learned one by one to go sky high.
Then townlands vanished into aerodromes, Hiroshima made light of human bones, Concorde"s neb migrated towards the future.
So who were we to want to hang back there In spite of all?
In spite of all, we sailed Beyond ourselves and over and above The rafters aching in our shoulderblades, The give and take of branches in our arms.
Two Stick Drawings
I.
Claire O"Reilly used her granny"s stick A crook-necked one to snare the highest briars That always grew the ripest blackberries.
When it came to gathering, Persephone Was in the halfpenny place compared to Claire.
She"d trespa.s.s and climb gates and walk the railway Where sootflakes blew into convolvulus And the train tore past with the stoker yelling Like a balked king from his iron chariot.
II.
With its drover"s canes and blackthorns and ashplants, The ledge of the back seat of my father"s car Had turned into a kind of stick-shop window, But the only one who ever window-shopped Was Jim of the hanging jaw, for Jim was simple And rain or shine he"d make his desperate rounds From windscreen to back window, hands held up To both sides of his face, peering and groaning.
So every now and then the sticks would be Brought out for him and stood up one by one Against the front mudguard; and one by one Jim would take the measure of them, sight And wield and slice and poke and parry The unhindering air; until he found The true extension of himself in one That made him jubilant. He"d run and crow, Stooped forward, with his right elbow stuck out And the stick held horizontal to the ground, Angled across in front of him, as if He were leashed to it and it drew him on Like a harness rod of the inexorable.
A Call
"Hold on," she said, "I"ll just run out and get him.
The weather here"s so good, he took the chance To do a bit of weeding."
So I saw him Down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig, Touching, inspecting, separating one Stalk from the other, gently pulling up Everything not tapered, frail and leafless, Pleased to feel each little weed-root break, But rueful also ...
Then found myself listening to The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks Where the phone lay unattended in a calm Of mirror gla.s.s and sunstruck pendulums ...
And found myself then thinking: if it were nowadays, This is how Death would summon Everyman.
Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.
The Errand
"On you go now! Run, son, like the devil
And tell your mother to try To find me a bubble for the spirit level And a new knot for this tie."
But still he was glad, I know, when I stood my ground, Putting it up to him With a smile that trumped his smile and his fool"s errand, Waiting for the next move in the game.
A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also in memory of Donatus Nwoga
When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message: They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn"t want to end up lost forever Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead, they saw their souls in a flock at twilight Cawing and headed back for the same old roosts And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood: At first light they"d be back in the house of life.
(The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).
But death and human beings took second place When he trotted off the path and started barking At another dog in broad daylight just barking Back at him from the far bank of a river.
And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first, The toad who"d overheard in the beginning What the dog was meant to tell. "Human beings," he said (And here the toad was trusted absolutely), "Human beings want death to last forever."
Then Chukwu saw the people"s souls in birds Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once And nothing that the dog would tell him later Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves In obliterated light, the toad in mud, The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.
The Strand
The dotted line my father"s ashplant made
On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won"t wash away.
The Walk
Glamoured the road, the day, and him and her
And everywhere they took me. When we stepped out Cobbles were riverbed, the Sunday air A high stream-roof that moved in silence over Rhododendrons in full bloom, foxgloves And hemlock, robin-run-the-hedge, the hedge With its deckled ivy and thick shadows Until the riverbed itself appeared, Gravelly, shallowy, summery with pools, And made a world rim that was not for crossing.
Love brought me that far by the hand, without The slightest doubt or irony, dry-eyed And knowledgeable, contrary as be d.a.m.ned; Then just kept standing there, not letting go.
So here is another longshot. Black and white.
A negative this time, in dazzle-dark, Smudge and pallor where we make out you and me, The selves we struggled with and struggled out of, Two shades who have consumed each other"s fire, Two flames in sunlight that can sear and singe, But seem like wisps of enervated air, After-wavers, feathery ether-shifts ...
Yet apt still to rekindle suddenly If we find along the way charred gra.s.s and sticks And an old fire-fragrance lingering on, Erotic woodsmoke, witchery, intrigue, Leaving us none the wiser, just better primed To speed the plough again and feed the flame.
At the Wellhead
Your songs, when you sing them with your two eyes closed
As you always do, are like a local road We"ve known every turn of in the past That midge-veiled, high-hedged side-road where you stood Looking and listening until a car Would come and go and leave you lonelier Than you had been to begin with. So, sing on, Dear shut-eyed one, dear far-voiced veteran, Sing yourself to where the singing comes from, Ardent and cut off like our blind neighbour Who played the piano all day in her bedroom.
Her notes came out to us like hoisted water Ravelling off a bucket at the wellhead Where next thing we"d be listening, hushed and awkward.
That blind-from-birth, sweet-voiced, withdrawn musician Was like a silver vein in heavy clay.
Night water glittering in the light of day.
But also just our neighbour, Rosie Keenan.
She touched our cheeks. She let us touch her braille In books like books wallpaper patterns came in.
Her hands were active and her eyes were full Of open darkness and a watery shine.
She knew us by our voices. She"d say she "saw"
Whoever or whatever. Being with her Was intimate and helpful, like a cure You didn"t notice happening. When I read A poem with Keenan"s well in it, she said, "I can see the sky at the bottom of it now."
At Banagher
Then all of a sudden there appears to me
The journeyman tailor who was my antecedent: Up on a table, cross-legged, ripping out A garment he must recut or resew, His lips tight back, a thread between his teeth, Keeping his counsel always, giving none, His eyelids steady as wrinkled horn or iron.
Self-absenting, both migrant and ensconced; Admitted into kitchens, into clothes His touch has the power to turn to cloth again All of a sudden he appears to me, Unopen, unmendacious, unillumined.