Derek Mahon Poems

I lie and imagine a first light gleam in the bay
After one more night of erosion and nearer the grave,
Then stand and gaze from the window at break of day
As a shearwater skims the ridge of an incoming wave;
...

They said I got away in a boat
And humbled me at the inquiry. I tell you
I sank as far that night as any
Hero. As I sat shivering on the dark water
...

(for James Simmons)
1

I wake in a dark flat
To the soft roar of the world.
...

Even now there are places where a thought might grow —
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped for ever, and a flutte
...

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
...

A blink of lightning, then
a rumor, a grumble of white rain
growing in volume, rustling over the ground,
...

There is an old
statue in the courtyard
that weeps, like Niobe, its sorrow in stone.
...

What night-rule now about this haunted grove?
The spirits have dispersed, the woods
faded to grey from midnight blue
...

Surely you paused at this roadside oasis
In your nomadic youth, and saw the mound
Of never-used cement, the curious faces,
...

(for Seamus Heaney)
First time out
I was a torc of gold
And wept tears of the sun.
...