This is what I inherit —
It was never my own life,
But a house’s name I heard
And others heard as warning
Of what might happen a girl
Daring and caught by ill-luck:
A fragment of desolate
Fact, a hammer-note of fear —
But I never saw the place.
Now that I stand at the gate
And that time is so long gone
It is their absence that rains,
That stabs right into the seams
Of my big coat, settling
On my shoulder, in pointed
Needles, crowding the short day.
The white barred gate is closed,
The white fence tracks out of sight
Where the avenue goes, rain
Veils distance, dimming all sound,
And a halfdrawn lace of mist
Hides elements of the known:
Gables and high blind windows.
The story has moved away.
The rain darns into the grass,
Blown over the tidal lough
Past the isolated roof
And the tall trees in the park;
It gusts off to south and west;
Earth is secret as ever:
The blood that was sown here flowered
And all the seeds blew away.