Air from another life and time and place,
Pale blue heavenly air is supporting
A white wing beating high against the breeze,
...
I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,
...
I
To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
...
It is December in Wicklow:
Alders dripping, birches
Inheriting the last light,
The ash tree cold to look at.
...
So winter closed its fist
And got it stuck in the pump.
The plunger froze up a lump
...
My 'place of clear water,'
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass
...
The tightness and the nilness round that space
when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect
its make and number and, as one bends his face
...
There, in the corner, staring at his drink.
The cap juts like a gantry's crossbeam,
Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw.
Speech is clamped in the lips' vice.
...
for Michael Longley
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
...