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
...

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

Amateur witches and professional virgins,
Sirens and shepherdesses - all new areas
Of experience (I have been out of touch) -
...

Achilles hunts down Hector like a sparrowhawk
Screeching after a horror-struck collared-dove
That flails just in front of her executioner, so
...

Pulling up flax after the blue flowers have fallen
And laying our handfuls in the peaty water
To rot those grasses to the bone, or building stooks
...

This is your first night in Carrigskeewaun.
The Owennadornaun is so full of rain
You arrived in Paddy Morrison's tractor,
...

You showed me my twin's feet when he was dead,
Your sailor-husband's feet, your engineer's - how
Cold they felt, how handsome ankle and toe,
...

As if a one-room schoolhouse were all we knew
And our clothes were black, our underclothes black,
Marriage a horse and buggy going to church
...

Inauspicious between headstones
On Angel Hill, wintry love
Tokens for Murdo, Alistair,
...