But the actual washed stuff kept you slow and steady

As you went stooping with your barrow full

Into an absolution of the body,

The shriven life tired bones and marrow feel.

So walk on air against your better judgement

Establishing yourself somewhere in between

Those solid batches mixed with grey cement

And a tune called ‘The Gravel Walks’ that conjures green.

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 glass 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.

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.

At the Wellhead