III

Once upon a time my undrowned father

Walked into our yard. He had gone to spray

Potatoes in a field on the riverbank

And wouldn’t bring me with him. The horse-sprayer

Was too big and new-fangled, bluestone might

Burn me in the eyes, the horse was fresh, I

Might scare the horse, and so on. I threw stones

At a bird on the shed roof, as much for

The clatter of the stones as anything,

But when he came back, I was inside the house

And saw him out the window, scatter-eyed

And daunted, strange without his hat,

His step unguided, his ghosthood immanent.

When he was turning on the riverbank,

The horse had rusted and reared up and pitched

Cart and sprayer and everything off balance

So the whole rig went over into a deep

Whirlpool, hoofs, chains, shafts, cartwheels, barrel

And tackle, all tumbling off the world,

And the hat already merrily swept along

The quieter reaches. That afternoon

I saw him face to face, he came to me

With his damp footprints out of the river,

And there was nothing between us there

That might not still be happily ever after.

1. I. 87

Dangerous pavements.

But I face the ice this year

With my father’s stick.

Field of Vision

I remember this woman who sat for years

In a wheelchair, looking straight ahead

Out the window at sycamore trees unleafing

And leafing at the far end of the lane.

Straight out past the TV in the corner,

The stunted, agitated hawthorn bush,

The same small calves with their backs to wind and rain,

The same acre of ragwort, the same mountain.

She was steadfast as the big window itself.

Her brow was clear as the chrome bits of the chair.

She never lamented once and she never

Carried a spare ounce of emotional weight.

Face to face with her was an education

Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate –

One of those lean, clean, iron, roadside ones

Between two whitewashed pillars, where you could see

Deeper into the country than you expected

And discovered that the field behind the hedge

Grew more distinctly strange as you kept standing

Focused and drawn in by what barred the way.

from Glanmore Revisited

VII The Skylight

You were the one for skylights. I opposed

Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove

Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed,

Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof

Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling,

The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.

Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.

The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant

Sky entered and held surprise wide open.

For days I felt like an inhabitant

Of that house where the man sick of the palsy

Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven,

Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.

A Pillowed Head

Matutinal. Mother-of-pearl

Summer come early. Slashed carmines

And washed milky blues.