Michael Longley Poems

A fastidious brewer of tea, a tea
Connoisseur as well as a poet,
I modestly request on my sixtieth
Birthday a gift of snow water.
...

We were combatants from the start. Our dad
Bought us boxing gloves when we were ten —
Champions like Euryalus, say, or Epeius
...

Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
...

The spear-point pierces his tender neck.
His armour clatters as he hits the ground.
Blood soaks his hair, bonny as the Graces',
...

My father, let no similes eclipse
Where crosses like some forest simplified
Sink roots into my mind, the slow sands
...

Your uncle, totem and curator bends
Above your cot. It is you I want to see.
Your cry comes out like an eleison.
...

The freeze-up annexes the sea even,
Putting out over the waves its platform.
Let skies fall, the fox's belly cave in -
...

And, summing up, I think of when
With cloud and cloudburst you confer,
By God's sheer genius lifted there,
...

Lighting up, lest all our hearts should break,
His fiftieth cigarette of the day,
Happy with so many notes at his beck
...

These are the small hours when
Moths by their fatal appetite
Which thatbrings them tapping to get in,
...