My uncle played the fiddle — more elegantly the violin —
A favourite at barn and crossroads dance,
He knew ‘The Morning Star’ and ‘O’Neill’s Lament’.
Bachelor head of a house full of sisters,
Runner of poor racehorses, spendthrift,
He left for the New World in an old disgrace.
He left his fiddle in the rafters
When he sailed, never played afterwards,
A rural art stilled in the discord of Brooklyn.
A heavily-built man, tranquil-eyed as an ox,
He ran a wild speakeasy, and died of it.
During the Depression many dossed in his cellar.
I attended his funeral in the Church of the Redemption,
Then, unexpected successor, reversed time
To return where he had been born.
During my schooldays the fiddle rusted
(The bridge fell away, the catgut snapped)
Reduced to a plaything, stinking of stale rosin.
The country people asked if I also had music
(All the family had had) but the fiddle was in pieces
And the rafters remade, before I discovered my craft.
Twenty years afterwards, I saw the church again,
And promised to remember my burly godfather
And his rural craft after this fashion:
So succession passes, through strangest hands.
A Chosen Light (1967)
and The Rough Field (1972)