what you have you hold
to play with and pose with
and lay about with.
But then too it points back to cattle
and spatter and beating
the bars of a gate –
the very stick we might cut
from your family tree.
The living cobalt of an afternoon
dragonfly drew my eye to it first
and the evening I trimmed it for you
you saw your first glow-worm –
all of us stood round in silence, even you
gigantic enough to darken the sky
for a glow-worm.
And when I poked open the grass
a tiny brightening den lit the eye
in the blunt pared end of your stick.
A Kite for Michael and Christopher
All through that Sunday afternoon
a kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, a flitter of blown chaff.
I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of newspaper
along its six-foot tail.
But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to lift a shoal.
My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weighs like a furrow assumed into the heavens.
Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand in here in front of me
and take the strain.
The Railway Children
When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.
Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.
We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,
Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled
We could stream through the eye of a needle.
Widgeon
for Paul Muldoon
It had been badly shot.
While he was plucking it
he found, he says, the voice box –
like a flute stop
in the broken windpipe –
and blew upon it
unexpectedly
his own small widgeon cries.
Sheelagh na Gig
at Kilpeck
I
We look up at her
hunkered into her angle
under the eaves.
She bears the whole stone burden
on the small of her back and shoulders
and pinioned elbows,
the astute mouth, the gripping fingers
saying push, push hard,
push harder.
As the hips go high
her big tadpole forehead
is rounded out in sunlight.
And here beside her are two birds,
a rabbit’s head, a ram’s,
a mouth devouring heads.
II
Her hands holding herself
are like hands in an old barn
holding a bag open.
I was outside looking in
at its lapped and supple mouth
running grain.
I looked up under the thatch
at the dark mouth and eye
of a bird’s nest or a rat hole,
smelling the rose on the wall,
mildew, an earthen floor,
the warm depth of the eaves.
And then one night in the yard
I stood still under heavy rain
wearing the bag like a caul.
III
We look up to her,
her ring-fort eyes,
her little slippy shoulders,
her nose incised and flat,
and feel light-headed looking up.
She is twig-boned, saddle-sexed,
grown-up, grown ordinary,
seeming to say,
‘Yes, look at me to your heart’s content
but look at every other thing.’
And here is a leaper in a kilt,
two figures kissing,
a mouth with sprigs,
a running hart, two fishes,
a damaged beast with an instrument.
âAyeâ
( from âThe Loamingâ)
Big voices in the womanless kitchen.
They never lit a lamp in the summertime
but took the twilight as it came
like solemn trees. They sat on in the dark
with their pipes red in their mouths, the talk come down
to Aye and Aye again and, when the dog shifted,
a curt There boy!
                          I closed my eyes
to make the
to play with and pose with
and lay about with.
But then too it points back to cattle
and spatter and beating
the bars of a gate –
the very stick we might cut
from your family tree.
The living cobalt of an afternoon
dragonfly drew my eye to it first
and the evening I trimmed it for you
you saw your first glow-worm –
all of us stood round in silence, even you
gigantic enough to darken the sky
for a glow-worm.
And when I poked open the grass
a tiny brightening den lit the eye
in the blunt pared end of your stick.
A Kite for Michael and Christopher
All through that Sunday afternoon
a kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, a flitter of blown chaff.
I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of newspaper
along its six-foot tail.
But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to lift a shoal.
My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weighs like a furrow assumed into the heavens.
Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand in here in front of me
and take the strain.
The Railway Children
When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.
Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.
We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,
Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled
We could stream through the eye of a needle.
Widgeon
for Paul Muldoon
It had been badly shot.
While he was plucking it
he found, he says, the voice box –
like a flute stop
in the broken windpipe –
and blew upon it
unexpectedly
his own small widgeon cries.
Sheelagh na Gig
at Kilpeck
I
We look up at her
hunkered into her angle
under the eaves.
She bears the whole stone burden
on the small of her back and shoulders
and pinioned elbows,
the astute mouth, the gripping fingers
saying push, push hard,
push harder.
As the hips go high
her big tadpole forehead
is rounded out in sunlight.
And here beside her are two birds,
a rabbit’s head, a ram’s,
a mouth devouring heads.
II
Her hands holding herself
are like hands in an old barn
holding a bag open.
I was outside looking in
at its lapped and supple mouth
running grain.
I looked up under the thatch
at the dark mouth and eye
of a bird’s nest or a rat hole,
smelling the rose on the wall,
mildew, an earthen floor,
the warm depth of the eaves.
And then one night in the yard
I stood still under heavy rain
wearing the bag like a caul.
III
We look up to her,
her ring-fort eyes,
her little slippy shoulders,
her nose incised and flat,
and feel light-headed looking up.
She is twig-boned, saddle-sexed,
grown-up, grown ordinary,
seeming to say,
‘Yes, look at me to your heart’s content
but look at every other thing.’
And here is a leaper in a kilt,
two figures kissing,
a mouth with sprigs,
a running hart, two fishes,
a damaged beast with an instrument.
âAyeâ
( from âThe Loamingâ)
Big voices in the womanless kitchen.
They never lit a lamp in the summertime
but took the twilight as it came
like solemn trees. They sat on in the dark
with their pipes red in their mouths, the talk come down
to Aye and Aye again and, when the dog shifted,
a curt There boy!
                          I closed my eyes
to make the
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