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
...

If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Hail, floppy-slippered bear of St. Mark's Place!
I seem to glimpse your cheesy, limestone face
...

(for Harry Clifton)

A whole night-sky that serves as a paperweight,
this azure block blown in from the universe
...

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,
...

(for James Simmons)
1

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

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
...