Still. Discernible beneath all that is the building-

site next door, and the high-pitched resistant tear

of one taut material moving through another.

Talking in Kitchens

Our friend Michael comes by and we sit at the table,

eating a curry from the Bombay Bicycle Club

and passing the baby between us.

When Michael has left we head upstairs

and the baby’s asleep and we’ve talked ourselves out

and we feel as we feel every day of the year

like nobody knows how we feel and it’s fine,

because our secrets live near the secrets of others,

and our wants are not so mean.

Easement comes in the weirdest of places

like that blue fire lit in the wood-burning stove

or the face on the dog when she chews at a carrot.

Here it is written down if I forget to say it –

my home is the temple made by your hands.

Special Effects

am sunk in velvet, surrounded by

the sound of violent doublethink;

sugar glass and blanks, such subterfuge

they use to skim meaning from the real,

but though the exit signs are dim

inside the auditorium,

exact attention will not fail

the ticks and bumps of icy cubes

blunting in your carbonated soft drink,

and mine, since at your side I

am sunk in velvet, surrounded by

the sound of violent doublethink;

sugar glass and blanks, such subterfuge

they use to skim meaning from the real,

but though the exit signs are dim

inside the auditorium,

exact attention will not fail

the ticks and bumps of icy cubes

blunting in your carbonated soft drink,

and mine, since at your side I

am sunk in velvet, surrounded by

the sound of violent doublethink;

sugar glass and blanks, such subterfuge

they use to skim meaning from the real,

but though the exit signs are dim

A Blessing for the Big Men

Health be to you since your camps were loosened;

it is men with God you are

and blessed is the earth you walked on.

The blessing of the sun and the moon be upon you.

I will go up on the mountain alone

and I will come hither from it again.

It is bonefires we used to have and playing-cards,

and the word of God was often with us –

It is not a little story this.

It is not the trouble of one house

or the grief of one harp-string.

A shelter to the naked. A comfort to the poor.

Och ochone!

O’Kelly has manuring for his land that is not sand or dung.

After Raftery

The Package from Latvia

I know no one in Latvia and have never been,

though I met up with a girlfriend in Vilnius once,

and years ago spent a druggy weekend in Tallinn

with my friend Tom, losing money in casinos

and buying two interRailers from Montreal

a flotilla of cocktails we couldn’t afford.

But Latvia’s a blank and this package, comparable

to a shoebox, maybe slightly bigger, has appeared

without a return address, and much postage of foreign fauna,