Hell won’t be full till you’re in it,
she said, ye lazy scut, ye big sour-faced
whipster; and in a huff he hoofed it
down the rise, past the stream, thunder-faced
past bogbane, water-violet and marsh-marigolds,
cress and sorrel spread over the surface
of the stream, effing and blinding as he rolled
with spilling fingers soft Virginian shag—
sucked in deep, blew out slow—and strolled
past blackthorn, barley fields and clay-
crusted hills, where he lay down among white
butterflies, ragweed, dandelions, clags
on a grass bed, green-waved in sunlight,
the wings of crows brooming shadows upon it.
Bright light sprawling white cotton clouds
looked like they’d never heard of rain:
some saw in them maps, memory shapes,
continents, faces of demons, gondolas
lazing through sunstreams. He saw sheep
grazing in a greener-than-green field
bedizzled by buttercups carpeted down
to a fizzing hedge, stone path and two
apple trees standing sentry to a view
of the lough, coastline, chopped open sea,
oblivious to things that might have been
or might be, passing lives, the mist and creep
of stolen thoughts, the dead and unborn
drifting, on their backs, counting sheep.
Howl on to your horses for the death of sweet
Jesus, he almost said, almost overpowered,
sensing her sniping behind him, the sweetmeat
stains of her apron caked in buttermilk and flour,
mouth tight shut as a crow’s arse, while she looked
down on his backside, his head in the flowers,
where he’d seen a green bloom that he mistook
for a rose for a moment. Once she’d groused and grutched
back indoors he snuck to the barn and took
out the clippers to snick around the edge
of the house, but she stooked her head out
and blared: don’t make a big barney balls of that hedge!
then went back to griddling hot potato bread
asking where’s his mind? what is his head?
He dreamed she was a cloud, frayed at the seams,
bits of her floating hither, others thither,
edges wisped, funnelled, whispered and curled,
tentacles feeling for the way the four winds
were blowing. In the evening she would turn
hyacinth, rose, japonica and orange
blossom on a flasket of lemon and blue.
On her best days a big hole would open
in her head and a stairway to marvels
might spotlight through. But mostly she’d be
degged grey, gathering her bits together
in a bloated, grimaced, grave-bellied swell
fit to split open a black harvest of grain,
head-hung children who would forbear her rain.
Clegged boots by the door, heavy hair dredged,
battered and bowed by the gravel-hard rain,
sullen and speechless, swilling the dregs
of his tea, she thought him feck-brained,
his head on the table, engrossed with weevils
creeping over fried crumbs and egg-stains
on his thick clacked plate. Why in the name
of the devil’s good Da did you go and do a daft
thing like that? she asked, once she’d weaselled
that he’d signed on the straight line of his draft
papers to leave her to the dootering cows—
to leave in his wake a trail of boot-shaped rifts
in the ground: sumped and tumid shrouds
of silt and glit, with his head in the clouds.
After he died in July nineteen-sixteen
she received this letter: Dear Rosie,
when I get a minute, here and there, I’ve been
rooted in Leaves of Grass, which helps me see
the sweet bay, bluebells and primrose-decked
tumps of our home. I hope you’re not lonely.
I dreamt we were lying in a slaking field
edged with yellow-bloomed whin and green
flowers. I think they were roses. You pricked
your pink finger on one and as we leaned
back to watch the clouds you gave it to me
and I kissed it until the gash had been cleaned
among the high rushes of whispering barley.
Regards, with deepest love and sincerity.
When next July came she rose to head
out by the whitethorn and poplars, over tinder,
dogwood, docken-strewn paths, while overhead
she could see that white clouds were seething,
furious with ice, shape-shifters, mind-benders,
cheating forms sucking up something from nothing,
sailing over nettles, lungwort and thyme;
and she halted where the stream became a river
by the big elm: among buddleia and woodbine
she took off her blouse, checking nobody
was about, slipped from her skirts, and lowered
herself between two moss-bearded boulders
to flense and flush her still-young body
in the on-gush and go of breaking water.
Maybe he dreamed of Lady Dixon Park
or Clandeboye, maybe Killynether,
retreading leaves of grass, stooping to pick
wild tulips, bell heather, thinking ‘There will never
be any more heaven or hell than there is now’,
watching a felt-pelted bumble bee hover
in circles over a green flower that was new
to him, that was maybe a rose, as he grappled
with the long and the short of it. ‘And I know
the amplitude of time’ and other unforeseeable
lines swooped and made him think someone stooped
to pluck and blow him through the four winds; that maybe
‘I am not contained between my hat and my boots’,
no more than the green rose by hip, pricks or loveroot.