at Ballynahinch, at Ballynahinch.

New Vows

From this day forth to unhold,

to see the nothing in ringed gold,

uncare for you when you are old.

New vows you make me swear to keep –

not ever wake with you, or sleep,

or your body, with mine, worship;

this empty hand slipped from your glove,

these lips sip never from our loving cup,

I may not cherish, kiss; unhave, unlove …

And all my worldly goods to unendow …

And who here present upon whom I call …

Leda

Obsessed by faithfulness,

I went to the river

where the swans swam in their pairs and saw how a heart

formed in the air as they touched, partnered forever.

Under the weeping trees a lone swan swam apart.

I knelt like a bride as bees hymned in the clover

and he rose, huge, an angel, out of the water,

to cover me, my billed, feathered, webbed, winged lover;

a chaos of passion beating the fair day whiter.

My hands, frantic to hold him, felt flight, force, friction,

his weird beautiful form rising and falling above –

the waxy, intimate creak –

as though he might fly,

turn all my unborn children into fiction.

I knew their names that instant, pierced by love

and by the song the swans sing as they die.

Valentine’s

Pain past bearing, poetry’s price,

to know which of the harms and hurts

dealt to you, to the day, was fatal;

a kick to the heart by the ghost of a mule

you thought to ride to your wedding-feast.

But now you can snip that shadow

from your heels for mourning-dress

or go to hell in a handcart, along

with the rest of our helpless world;

and, O, if you could, you would,

where lovers walked, sell off the trees

and not give a flying fuck for

the muted mausoleums of the bees.

The Human Bee

I became a human bee at twelve,

when they gave me my small wand,

my flask of pollen,

and I walked with the other bees

out to the orchards.

I worked first in apples,

climbed the ladder

into the childless arms of a tree

and busied myself, dipping and tickling,

duping and tackling, tracing

the petal’s guidelines

down to the stigma.

Human, humming,

I knew my lessons by heart:

the ovary would become the fruit,

the ovule the seed,

fertilized by my golden touch,

my Midas dust.

I moved to lemons,

head and shoulders

lost in blossom; dawn till dusk,

my delicate blessing.

All must be docile, kind, unfraught

for one fruit –

pomegranate, lychee,

nectarine, peach, the rhymeless orange.

And if an opening bud

was out of range,

I’d jump from my ladder onto a branch

and reach.

So that was my working life as a bee,

till my eyesight blurred,

my hand was a trembling bird

in the leaves,

the bones of my fingers thinner than wands.

And when they retired me,

I had my wine from the silent vines,