THOMAS KINSELLA Tao and Unfitness at Inistiogue on the River Nore

	Noon
	The black flies kept nagging in the heat.
	Swarms of them, at every step, snarled
	off pats of cow dung spattered in the grass.

Move, if you move, like water.

	The punts were knocking by the boathouse, at full tide.
	Volumes of water turned the river curve
	hushed under an insect haze.

	Slips of white,
	trout bellies, flicked in the corner of the eye
	and dropped back onto the deep mirror.

	Respond. Do not interfere. Echo.
	Thick green woods along the opposite bank
	climbed up from a root-dark recess
	eaved with mud-whitened leaves.

*

	In a matter of hours all that water is gone,
	except for a channel near the far side.
	Muck and shingle and pools where the children
	wade, stabbing flatfish.

	Afternoon
	Inistiogue itself is perfectly lovely,
	like a typical English village, but a bit sullen.
	Our voices echoed in sunny corners
	among the old houses; we admired
	the stonework and gateways, the interplay
	of roofs and angled streets.

	The square, with its ‘village green’, lay empty.
	The little shops had hardly anything.
	The Protestant church was guarded by a woman
	of about forty, a retainer, spastic
	and indistinct, who drove us out.

	An obelisk to the Brownsfoords and a Victorian
	Celto-Gothic drinking fountain, erected
	by a Tighe widow for the villagers,
	‘erected’ in the centre. An astronomical-looking
	sundial stood sentry on a platform
	on the corner where High Street went up out of the square.

	We drove up, past a long-handled water pump
	placed at the turn, with an eye to the effect,
	then out of the town for a quarter of a mile
	above the valley, and came to the dead gate
	of Woodstock, once home of the Tighes.

*

	The great ruin presented its flat front
	at us, sunstruck. The children disappeared.
	Eleanor picked her way around a big fallen branch
	and away along the face toward the outbuildings.
	I took the grassy front steps and was gathered up
	in a brick-red stillness. A rook clattered out of the dining room.

	A sapling, hooked thirty feet up
	in a cracked corner, held out a ghost-green
	cirrus of leaves. Cavities
	of collapsed fireplaces connected silently
	about the walls. Deserted spaces, complicated
	by door-openings everywhere.

	There was a path up among bushes and nettles
	over the beaten debris, then a drop, where bricks
	and plaster and rafters had fallen into the kitchens.
	A line of small choked arches… The pantries, possibly.

Be still, as though pure.

A brick, and its dust, fell.

	Nightfall
	The trees we drove under in the dusk
	as we threaded back along the river through the woods
	were no mere dark growth, but a flitting-place
	for ragged feeling, old angers and rumours…

	Black and Tan ghosts up there, at home
	on the Woodstock heights: an iron mouth
	scanning the Kilkenny road: the house
	gutted by the townspeople and burned to ruins…

	The little Ford we met, and inched past, full of men
	we had noticed along the river bank during the week,
	disappeared behind us into a fifty-year-old night.
	Even their caps and raincoats…

	Sons, or grandsons, Poachers.
	Mud-tasted salmon
	slithering in a plastic bag around the boot,
	bloodied muscles, disputed since King John.
	The ghosts of daughters of the family
	waited in the uncut grass as we drove
	down to our mock-Austrian lodge and stopped.

*

	We untied the punt in the half-light, and pushed out
	to take a last hour on the river, until night.
	We drifted, but stayed almost still.
	The current underneath us
	and the tide coming back to the full
	cancelled in a gleaming calm, punctuated
	by the plop of fish.

	Down on the water… at eye level… in the little light
	remaining overhead… the mayfly passed in a loose drift,
	thick and frail, a hatch slow with sex,
	separate morsels trailing their slack filaments,
	olive, pale evening dun, imagoes, unseen eggs
	dropping from the air, subimagoes, the river filled
	with their nymphs ascending and excited trout.

Be subtle, as though not there.

	We were near the island – no more than a dark mass
	on a sheet of silver – when a man appeared in midriver
	quickly and with scarcely a sound, his paddle touching
	left and right of the prow, with a sack behind him.
	The flat cot’s long body slid past effortless
	as a fish, sinewing from side to side,
	as he passed us and vanished.

JAMES FENTON In a Notebook

	There was a river overhung with trees
	With wooden houses built along its shallows
	From which the morning sun drew up a haze
	And the gyrations of the early swallows
	Paid no attention to the gentle breeze
	Which spoke discreetly from the weeping willows.
	There was a jetty by the forest clearing
	Where a small boat was tugging at its mooring.

	And night still lingered underneath the eaves.
	In the dark houseboats families were stirring
	And Chinese soup was cooked on charcoal stoves.
	Then one by one there came into the clearing
	Mothers and daughters bowed beneath their sheaves.
	The silent children gathered round me staring
	And the shy soldiers setting out for battle
	Asked for a cigarette and laughed a little.

	From low canoes old men laid out their nets
	While on the bank young boys with lines were fishing.
	The wicker traps were drawn up by their floats.
	The girls stood waist-deep in the river washing
	Or tossed the day’s rice on enamel plates
	And I sat drinking bitter coffee wishing
	The tide would turn to bring me to my senses
	After the pleasant war and the evasive answers.

	There was a river overhung with trees.
	The girls stood waist-deep in the river washing,
	And night still lingered underneath the eaves
	While on the bank young boys with lines were fishing.
	Mothers and daughters bowed beneath their sheaves
	While I sat drinking bitter coffee wishing –
	And the tide turned and brought me to my senses.
	The pleasant war brought the unpleasant answers.

	The villages are burnt, the cities void;
	The morning light has left the river view;
	The distant followers have been dismayed;
	And I’m afraid, reading this passage now,
	That everything I knew has been destroyed
	By those whom I admired but never knew;
	The laughing soldiers fought to their defeat
	And I’m afraid most of my friends are dead.

JEFFREY WAINWRIGHT 1815

	I The Mill-Girl
	Above her face
	Dead roach stare vertically
	Out of the canal.
	Water fills her ears,
	Her nose her open mouth.
	Surfacing, her bloodless fingers
	Nudge the drying gills.

	The graves have not
	A foot’s width between them.
	Apprentices, jiggers, spinners
	Fill them straight from work,
	Common as smoke.

	Waterloo is all the rage;
	Coal and iron and wool
	Have supplied the English miracle.

	II Another Part of the Field
	The dead on all sides –
	The fallen –
	The deep-chested rosy ploughboys
	Swell out of their uniforms.

	The apple trees,
	That were dressed overall,
	Lie stripped about their heads.

	‘The French cavalry
	Came up very well my lord.’
	‘Yes. And they went down
	Very well too.
	Overturned like turtles.
	Our muskets were obliged
	To their white bellies.’

	No flies on Wellington.
	His spruce wit sits straight
	In the saddle, jogging by.

	III The Important Man
	Bothered by his wife
	From a good dinner,
	The lock-keeper goes down
	To his ponderous water’s edge
	To steer in the new corpse.

	A bargee, shouting to be let through,
	Stumps over the bulging lengths
	Of his hatches,
	Cursing the slowness
	Of water.

	The lock-keeper bends and pulls her out
	With his bare hands.
	Her white eyes, rolled upwards,
	Just stare.

	He is an important man now.
	He turns to his charge:
	The water flows uphill.

	IV Death of the Mill-Owner
	Shaking the black earth
	From a root of potatoes,
	The gardener walks
	To the kitchen door.

	The trees rattle
	Their empty branches together.

	Upstairs the old man
	Is surprised.
	His fat body clenches –
	Mortified
	At what is happening.

1979 CRAIG RAINE A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

	Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
	and some are treasured for their markings –

	they cause the eyes to melt
	or the body to shriek without pain.

	I have never seen one fly, but
	sometimes they perch on the hand.

	Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
	and rests its soft machine on ground:

	then the world is dim and bookish
	like engravings under tissue paper.

	Rain is when the earth is television.
	It has the property of making colours darker.

	Model T is a room with the lock inside –
	a key is turned to free the world

	for movement, so quick there is a film
	to watch for anything missed.

	But time is tied to the wrist
	or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

	In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
	that snores when you pick it up.

	If the ghost cries, they carry it
	to their lips and soothe it to sleep

	with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
	deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

	Only the young are allowed to suffer
	openly. Adults go to a punishment room

	with water but nothing to eat.
	They lock the door and suffer the noises

	alone. No one is exempt
	and everyone’s pain has a different smell.

	At night, when all the colours die,
	they hide in pairs

	and read about themselves –
	in colour, with their eyelids shut.

CHRISTOPHER REID Baldanders

	Pity the poor weightlifter
	alone on his catasta,

	who carries his pregnant belly
	in the hammock of his leotard

	like a melon wedged in a shopping bag…
	A volatile prima donna,

	he flaps his fingernails dry,
	then – squat as an armchair –

	gropes about the floor
	for inspiration, and finds it there.

	His Japanese muscularity
	resolves to domestic parody.

	Glazed, like a mantelpiece frog,
	he strains to become

	the World Champion (somebody, answer it!)
	Human Telephone.

TED HUGHES February 17th

	A lamb could not get born. Ice wind
	Out of a downpour dishclout sunrise. The mother
	Lay on the mudded slope. Harried, she got up
	And the blackish lump bobbed at her back-end
	Under her tail. After some hard galloping,
	Some manoeuvring, much flapping of the backward
	Lump head of the lamb looking out,
	I caught her with a rope. Laid her, head uphill
	And examined the lamb. A blood-ball swollen
	Tight in its black felt, its mouth gap
	Squashed crooked, tongue stuck out, black-purple,
	Strangled by its mother. I felt inside,
	Past the noose of mother-flesh, into the slippery
	Muscled tunnel, fingering for a hoof,
	Right back to the port-hole of the pelvis.
	But there was no hoof. He had stuck his head out too early
	And his feet could not follow. He should have
	Felt his way, tip-toe, his toes
	Tucked up under his nose
	For a safe landing. So I kneeled wrestling
	With her groans. No hand could squeeze past
	The lamb’s neck into her interior
	To hook a knee. I roped that baby head
	And hauled till she cried out and tried
	To get up and I saw it was useless. I went
	Two miles for the injection and a razor.
	Sliced the lamb’s throat-strings, levered with a knife
	Between the vertebrae and brought the head off
	To stare at its mother, its pipes sitting in the mud
	With all earth for a body. Then pushed
	The neck-stump right back in, and as I pushed
	She pushed. She pushed crying and I pushed gasping.
	And the strength
	Of the birth push and the push of my thumb
	Against that wobbly vertebra were deadlock,
	A to-fro futility. Till I forced
	A hand past and got a knee. Then like
	Pulling myself to the ceiling with one finger
	Hooked in a loop, timing my effort
	To her birth push groans, I pulled against
	The corpse that would not come. Till it came.
	And after it the long, sudden, yolk-yellow
	Parcel of life
	In a smoking slither of oils and soups and syrups –
	And the body lay born, beside the hacked-off head.

17 February 1974

SEAMUS HEANEY The Strand at Lough Beg

	In memory of Colum McCartney
	All round this little island, on the strand
	Far down below there, where the breakers strive,
	Grow the tall rushes from the oozy sand.
	DANTE, Purgatorio, I, 100–103

	Leaving the white glow of filling stations
	And a few lonely streetlamps among fields
	You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton
	Past the Fews Forest, out beneath the stars –
	Along that road, a high, bare pilgrim’s track
	Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads,
	Goat-beards and dogs’ eyes in a demon pack
	Blazing out of the ground, snapping and squealing.
	What blazed ahead of you? A faked road block?
	The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling
	Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun?
	Or in your driving mirror, tailing headlights
	That pulled out suddenly and flagged you down
	Where you weren’t known and far from what you knew:
	The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg,
	Church Island’s spire, its soft treeline of yew.

	There you once heard guns fired behind the house
	Long before rising time, when duck shooters
	Haunted the marigolds and bulrushes,
	But still were scared to find spent cartridges,
	Acrid, brassy, genital, ejected,
	On your way across the strand to fetch the cows.
	For you and yours and yours and mine fought shy,
	Spoke an old language of conspirators
	And could not crack the whip or seize the day:
	Big-voiced scullions, herders, feelers round
	Haycocks and hindquarters, talkers in byres,
	Slow arbitrators of the burial ground.

	Across that strand of yours the cattle graze
	Up to their bellies in an early mist
	And now they turn their unbewildered gaze
	To where we work our way through squeaking sedge
	Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge
	Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze.
	I turn because the sweeping of your feet
	Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees
	With blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes,
	Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass
	And gather up cold handfuls of the dew
	To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss
	Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.
	I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.
	With rushes that shoot green again, I plait
	Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.

MICHAEL LONGLEY from Wreaths

	The Linen Workers
	Christ’s teeth ascended with him into heaven:
	Through a cavity in one of his molars
	The wind whistles: he is fastened for ever
	By his exposed canines to a wintry sky.

	I am blinded by the blaze of that smile
	And by the memory of my father’s false teeth
	Brimming in their tumbler: they wore bubbles
	And, outside of his body, a deadly grin.

	When they masscred the ten linen workers
	There fell on the road beside them spectacles,
	Wallets, small change, and a set of dentures:
	Blood, food particles, the bread, the wine.

	Before I can bury my father once again
	I must polish the spectacles, balance them
	Upon his nose, fill his pockets with money
	And into his dead mouth slip the set of teeth.

TOM PAULIN Where Art is a Midwife 1980

	In the third decade of March,
	A Tuesday in the town of Z –

	The censors are on day-release.
	They must learn about literature.

	There are things called ironies,
	Also symbols, which carry meaning.

	The types of ambiguity
	Are as numerous as the enemies

	Of the state. Formal and bourgeois,
	Sonnets sing of the old order,

	Its lost gardens where white ladies
	Are served wine in the subtle shade.

	This poem about a bear
	Is not a poem about a bear.

	It might be termed a satire
	On a loyal friend. Do I need

	To spell it out? Is it possible
	That none of you can understand?

PAUL MULDOON Why Brownlee Left

	Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
	Is a mystery even now.
	For if a man should have been content
	It was him; two acres of barley,

	One of potatoes, four bullocks,
	A milker, a slated farmhouse.
	He was last seen going out to plough
	On a March morning, bright and early.

	By noon Brownlee was famous;
	They had found all abandoned, with
	The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
	Horses, like man and wife,
	Shifting their weight from foot to
	Foot, and gazing into the future.

PAUL MULDOON Anseo

	When the Master was calling the roll
	At the primary school in Collegelands,
	You were meant to call back Anseo
	And raise your hand
	As your name occurred.
	Anseo, meaning here, here and now,
	All present and correct,
	Was the first word of Irish I spoke.
	The last name on the ledger
	Belonged to Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward
	And was followed, as often as not,
	By silence, knowing looks,
	A nod and a wink, the Master’s droll
	‘And where’s our little Ward-of-court?’

	I remember the first time he came back
	The Master had sent him out
	Along the hedges
	To weigh up for himself and cut
	A stick with which he would be beaten.
	After a while, nothing was spoken;
	He would arrive as a matter of course
	With an ash-plant, a salley-rod.
	Or, finally, the hazel-wand
	He had whittled down to a whip-lash,
	Its twist of red and yellow lacquers

	Sanded and polished,
	And altogether so delicately wrought
	That he had engraved his initials on it.

	I last met Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward
	In a pub just over the Irish border.
	He was living in the open,
	In a secret camp
	On the other side of the mountain.
	He was fighting for Ireland,
	Making things happen.
	And he told me, Joe Ward,
	Of how he had risen through the ranks
	To Quartermaster, Commandant:
	How every morning at parade
	His volunteers would call back Anseo
	And raise their hands
	As their names occurred.

PAUL DURCAN Tullynoe: Tête-à-Tête in the Parish Priest’s Parlour

	‘Ah, he was a grand man.’
	‘He was: he fell out of the train going to Sligo.’
	‘He did: he thought he was going to the lavatory.’
	‘Her did: in fact he stepped out the rear door of the train.’
	‘He did: God, he must have got an awful fright.’
	‘He did: he saw that it wasn’t the lavatory at all.’
	‘He did: he saw that it was the railway tracks going away from him.’
	‘He did: I wonder if… but he was a grand man.’
	‘He was: he had the most expensive Toyota you can buy.’
	‘He had: well, it was only beautiful.’
	‘It was: he used to have an Audi.’
	‘He had: as a matter of fact he used to have two Audis.’
	‘He had: and then he had an Avenger.’
	‘He had: and then he had a Volvo.’
	‘He had: in the beginning he had a lot of Volkses.’
	‘He had: he was a great man for the Volkses.’
	‘He was: did he once have an Escort?’
	‘He had not: he had a son a doctor.’
	‘He had: he had a Morris Minor too.’
	‘He had: and he had a sister a hairdresser in Kilmallock.’
	‘He had: he had another sister a hairdresser in Ballybunion.’
	‘He had: he was put in a coffin which was put in his father’s cart.’
	‘He was: his lady wife sat on top of the coffin driving the donkey.’
	‘She did: Ah, but he was a grand man.’
	‘He was: he was a grand man…‘
	‘Good night, Father.’
	‘Good night, Mary.’

PAUL DURCAN The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious

There – but for the clutch of luck – go I.

	At daybreak – in the arctic fog of a February daybreak –
	Shoulder-length helmets in the watchtowers of the concentration camp
	Caught me out in the intersecting arcs of the swirling searchlights.

	There were at least a zillion of us caught out there –
	Like ladybirds under a boulder –
	But under the microscope each of us was unique,

	Unique and we broke for cover, crazily breasting
	The barbed wire and some of us made it
	To the forest edge, but many of us did not

	Make it, although their unborn children did –
	Such as you whom the camp commandant branded
	Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Jesus, break his fall:

There – but for the clutch of luck – go we all.

1981 JAMES FENTON A German Requiem

For as at a great distance of place, that which wee look at, appears dimme, and without distinction of the smaller parts; and as Voyces grow weak, and inarticulate; so also after great distance of time, our imagination of the Past is weak; and wee lose (for example) of Cities wee have seen, many particular Streets; and of Actions, many particular Circumstances. This decaying sense, when wee would express the thing it self, (I mean fancy it selfe,) wee call Imagination, as I said before: But when we would express the decay, and signifie that the Sense is fading, old, and past, it is called Memory. So that Imagination and Memory are but one thing…

Hobbes, Leviathan

	It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
	It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
	It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
	It is not your memories which haunt you.
	It is not what you have written down.
	It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
	What you must go on forgetting all your life.
	And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.
	You will find out that you are not alone in the enterprise.
	Yesterday the very furniture seemed to reproach you.
	Today you take your place in the Widow’s Shuttle.

	¶
	The bus is waiting at the southern gate
	To take you to the city of your ancestors
	Which stands on the hill opposite, with gleaming pediments,
	As vivid as this charming square, your home.
	Are you shy? You should be. It is almost like a wedding,
	The way you clasp your flowers and give a little tug at your veil. Oh,
	The hideous bridesmaids, it is natural that you should resent them
	Just a little, on this first day.
	But that will pass, and the cemetery is not far.
	Here comes the driver, flicking a toothpick into the gutter,
	His tongue still searching between his teeth.
	See, he has not noticed you. No one has noticed you.
	It will pass, young lady, it will pass.

	¶
	How comforting it is, once or twice a year,
	To get together and forget the old times.
	As on those special days, ladies and gentlemen,
	When the boiled shirts gather at the graveside
	And a leering waistcoat approaches the rostrum.
	It is like a solemn pact between the survivors.
	The mayor has signed it on behalf of the freemasonry.
	The priest has sealed it on behalf of all the rest.
	Nothing more need be said, and it is better that way –

	¶
	The better for the widow, that she should not live in fear of surprise,
	The better for the young man, that he should move at liberty between the armchairs,
	The better that these bent figures who flutter among the graves
	Tending the nightlights and replacing the chrysanthemums
	Are not ghosts,
	That they shall go home.
	The bus is waiting, and on the upper terraces
	The workmen are dismantling the houses of the dead.

	¶
	But when so many had died, so many and at such speed,
	There were no cities waiting for the victims.
	They unscrewed the name-plates from the shattered doorways
	And carried them away with the coffins.
	So the squares and parks were filled with the eloquence of young cemeteries:
	The smell of fresh earth, the improvised crosses
	And all the impossible directions in brass and enamel.

	¶
	‘Doctor Gliedschirm, skin specialist, surgeries 14–16 hours or by appointment.’
	Professor Sargnagel was buried with four degrees, two associate memberships
	And instructions to tradesmen to use the back entrance.
	Your uncle’s grave informed you that he lived on the third floor, left.
	You were asked please to ring, and he would come down in the lift
	To which one needed a key…

	¶
	Would come down, would ever come down
	With a smile like thin gruel, and never too much to say.
	How he shrank through the years.
	How you towered over him in the narrow cage.
	How he shrinks now…

	¶
	But come. Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then.
	And it seems there is no limit to the resourcefulness of recollection.
	So that a man might say and think:
	When the world was at its darkest,
	When the black wings passed over the rooftops
	(And who can divine His purposes?) even then
	There was always, always a fire in this hearth.
	You see this cupboard? A priest-hole!
	And in that lumber-room whole generations have been housed and fed.
	Oh, if I were to begin, if I were to begin to tell you
	The half, the quarter, a mere smattering of what we went through!

	¶
	His wife nods, and a secret smile,
	Like a breeze with enough strength to carry one dry leaf
	Over two pavingstones, passes from chair to chair.
	Even the enquirer is charmed.
	He forgets to pursue the point.
	It is not what he wants to know.
	It is what he wants not to know.
	It is not what they say.
	It is what they do not say.

TONY HARRISON The Earthen Lot

	‘From Isphahan to Northumberland, there is no building that does not show the influence of that oppressed and neglected herd of men.’
	William Morris, The Art of the People

Sand, caravans, and teetering sea-edge graves.

	The seaward side’s for those of lowly status.
	Not only gales gnaw at their names, the waves
	jostle the skulls and bones from their quietus.

	The Church is a solid bulwark for their betters
	against the scouring sea-salt that erodes
	these chiselled sandstone formal Roman letters
	to flowing calligraphic Persian odes,
	singing of sherbert, sex in Samarkand,
	with Hafiz at the hammams and harems,
	O anywhere but bleak Northumberland
	with responsibilities for others’ dreams!

	Not for the Northern bard the tamarinds
	where wine is always cool, and kusi hot –

his line from Omar scrivened by this wind’s:

Some could articulate, while others not.

TONY HARRISON Continuous

	James Cagney was the one up both our streets.
	His was the only art we ever shared.
	A gangster film and choc ice were the treats
	that showed about as much love as he dared.

	He’d be my own age now in ’49!
	The hand that glinted with the ring he wore,
	his father’s, tipped the cold bar into mine
	just as the organist dropped through the floor.

	He’s on the platform lowered out of sight
	to organ music, this time on looped tape,
	into a furnace with a blinding light
	where only his father’s ring will keep its shape.

	I wear it now to Cagneys on my own
	and sense my father’s hand cupped round my treat –

	they feel as though they’ve been chilled to the bone
	from holding my ice cream all through White Heat.

DEREK MAHON Courtyards in Delft

	Pieter de Hooch, 1659
	Oblique light on the trite, on brick and tile –
	Immaculate masonry, and everywhere that
	Water tap, that broom and wooden pail
	To keep it so. House-proud, the wives
	Of artisans pursue their thrifty lives
	Among scrubbed yards, modest but adequate.
	Foliage is sparse, and clings. No breeze
	Ruffles the trim composure of those trees.

	No spinet-playing emblematic of
	The harmonies and disharmonies of love;
	No lewd fish, no fruit, no wide-eyed bird
	About to fly its cage while a virgin
	Listens to her seducer, mars the chaste
	Precision of the thing and the thing made.
	Nothing is random, nothing goes to waste:
	We miss the dirty dog, the fiery gin.

	That girl with her back to us who waits
	For her man to come home for his tea
	Will wait till the paint disintegrates
	And ruined dykes admit the esurient sea;
	Yet this is life too, and the cracked
	Out-house door a verifiable fact
	As vividly mnemonic as the sunlit
	Railings that front the houses opposite.

	I lived there as a boy and know the coal
	Glittering in its shed, late-afternoon
	Lambency informing the deal table,
	The ceiling cradled in a radiant spoon.
	I must be lying low in a room there,
	A strange child with a taste for verse,
	While my hard-nosed companions dream of war
	On parched veldt and fields of rain-swept gorse;

	For the pale light of that provincial town
	Will spread itself, like ink or oil,
	Over the not yet accurate linen
	Map of the world which occupies one wall
	And punish nature in the name of God.
	If only, now, the Maenads, as of right,
	Came smashing crockery, with fire and sword,
	We could sleep easier in our beds at night.