An Teach Tuí Poem by Vona Groarke

Thistledown, fuchsia, flagstone floor:
this noun house has the wherewithal
to sit out centuries

squat between bog-water darkness
and rooms turned inside out to summer,

straw-coloured months of childhood
answering each other

like opposite windows
in thick-set walls

that sunlight will cajole.

Tea roses bluster the half-door.
Rain from eaves footfalls the gravel.

A robin, cocksure of himself,
frittered away all morning in the shrub.

If I knew how to fix in even one language
the noise of his wings in flight

I wouldn't need another single word.