Michael Longley Poems

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1.
Snow Water

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.
...

2.
The Boxers

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

3.
Epithalamion

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

4.
The West

Beneath a gas-mantle that the moths bombard,
Light that powders at a touch, dusty wings,
I listen for news through the atmospherics,
A crackle of sea-wrack, spinning driftwood,
...

5.
CARRIGSKEEWAUN For Penny & David Cabot

The Mountain

This is ravens' territory, skulls, bones,
The marrow of these boulders supervised
From the upper air: I stand alone here
...

6.
The Pattern

Thirty-six years, to the day, after our wedding
When a cold figure-revealing wind blew against you
And lifted your veil, I find in its fat envelope
The six-shilling Vogue pattern for your bride's dress,
...

7.
Pipistrelle

They kept him alive for years in warm water,
The soldier who had lost his skin.
At night
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8.
En Route

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

9.
War & Peace

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

10.
Cloudberries

You give me cloudberry jam from Lapland,
Bog amber, snow-line titbits, scrumptious
Cloudberries sweetened slowly by the cold,
And costly enough for cloudberry wars
...

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