OPEN HOUSE
The house takes place on bog.
When the milk lorry goes by,
our rooms are gently shaken.
~
Unseen, unheard, each autumn
thousands of clusterflies
slip somehow into the attic
to sleep away the winter.
A sunny day sees a dozen
seep through the ceiling
to grieve the golden windows.
~
A spider’s listening device
in every dark corner,
roads known only to ants;
woollens coddling moths,
worms adding their code
to the words of our books;
springtail and silverfish,
dark-winged fungus gnat;
beetles eating the carpet,
dust mites feasting
on cranefly fuselage,
on flakes of our skin.
~
The cast of bees
in your studio
after the funeral,
which led to finding
the colony of bats
inside the fascia,
which led to the bat
which entered
the bedroom last thing
where it described
in its own good time
circle after circle
IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
What shall I give him, poor as I am?
I’ve sung these words for so many years,
but each time it gets harder,
until now I cannot sing them for tears.
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
Is it I first sang them long, long ago
in my father’s church, snowlight
silvering the walls, snow on snow on snow?
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
All the long gone lives, all the dear dead,
does their presence rise to close
my throat, to soak the eyes in my head?
Yet what I can I give him, give my heart.
Might it all come down to that last word –
how the heart, if ungiven,
weeps, where once it sang like a bird?
COMING OUT
Like birds on the brink
of a nest, unfledged,
beaks agape, there we were,
on the Mauma Road,
between Coumaraglin Mountain
and a far-off, shining sea.
Out of house, out of hedge
we were there,
larksong running
in stations of air,
soft heads of bog cotton
nodding assent to it all.
Words, what were they, and how
should we use them?
The coming of evening
over ridge and valley,
dewfall of stars
in the endless dark –
would we ever again
be ready, be able for this?