Whole requiems at the sight of plants and gardens …

They bore her lightly on the bier. Four women,

Four friends – she would have called them girls – stepped in

And claimed the final lift beneath the hawthorn.

Höfn

The three-tongued glacier has begun to melt.

What will we do, they ask, when boulder-milt

Comes wallowing across the delta flats

And the miles-deep shag-ice makes its move?

I saw it, ridged and rock-set, from above,

Undead grey-gristed earth-pelt, aeon-scruff,

And feared its coldness that still seemed enough

To iceblock the plane window dimmed with breath,

Deepfreeze the seep of adamantine tilth

And every warm, mouthwatering word of mouth.

Tate’s Avenue

Not the brown and fawn car rug, that first one

Spread on sand by the sea but breathing land-breaths,

Its vestal folds unfolded, its comfort zone

Edged with a fringe of sepia-coloured wool tails.

Not the one scraggy with crusts and eggshells

And olive stones and cheese and salami rinds

Laid out by the torrents of the Guadalquivir

Where we got drunk before the corrida.

Instead, again, it’s locked-park Sunday Belfast,

A walled back yard, the dustbins high and silent

As a page is turned, a finger twirls warm hair

And nothing gives on the rug or the ground beneath it.

I lay at my length and felt the lumpy earth,

Keen-sensed more than ever through discomfort,

But never shifted off the plaid square once.

When we moved I had your measure and you had mine.

The Blackbird of Glanmore

On the grass when I arrive,

Filling the stillness with life,

But ready to scare off

At the very first wrong move.

In the ivy when I leave.

It’s you, blackbird, I love.

I park, pause, take heed.

Breathe. Just breathe and sit

And lines I once translated

Come back: ‘I want away

To the house of death, to my father

Under the low clay roof.’

And I think of one gone to him,

A little stillness dancer –

Haunter-son, lost brother –

Cavorting through the yard,

So glad to see me home,

My homesick first term over.

And think of a neighbour’s words

Long after the accident:

‘Yon bird on the shed roof,

Up on the ridge for weeks –

I said nothing at the time

But I never liked yon bird.’

The automatic lock

Clunks shut, the blackbird’s panic

Is shortlived, for a second

I’ve a bird’s-eye view of myself,

A shadow on raked gravel

In front of my house of life.

Hedge-hop, I am absolute

For you, your ready talkback,

Your each stand-offish comeback,

Your picky, nervy goldbeak –

On the grass when I arrive,

In the ivy when I leave.

‘Had I not been awake’

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,

A wind that rose and whirled until the roof

Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore