Part 2 (2/2)

But I ran my hand in the half-filled bags Hooked to the slots. It was hard as shot, Innumerable and cool. The bags gaped Where the chutes ran back to the stilled drum And forks were stuck at angles in the ground As javelins might mark lost battlefields.

I moved between them back across the stubble.

They lay in the ring of their own crusts and dregs, Smoking and saying nothing. 'There's good yield, Isn't there?' as proud as if he were the land itself 'Enough for crus.h.i.+ng and for sowing both.'

And that was it. I'd come and he had shown me, So I belonged no further to the work.

I gathered cups and folded up the cloth And went. But they still kept their ease, Spread out, unb.u.t.toned, grateful, under the trees.

Night Drive

The smells of ordinariness

Were new on the night drive through France: Rain and hay and woods on the air Made warm draughts in the open car.

Signposts whitened relentlessly.

Montreuil, Abbeville, Beauvais Were promised, promised, came and went, Each place granting its name's fulfilment.

A combine groaning its way late Bled seeds across its work-light.

A forest fire smouldered out.

One by one small cafes shut.

I thought of you continuously A thousand miles south where Italy Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.

Your ordinariness was renewed there.

Relic of Memory

The lough waters

Can petrify wood: Old oars and posts Over the years Harden their grain, Incarcerate ghosts Of sap and season.

The shallows lap And give and take: Constant ablutions, Such drowning love Stun a stake To stalagmite.

Dead lava, The cooling star, Coal and diamond Or sudden birth Of burnt meteor Are too simple, Without the lure That relic stored A piece of stone On the shelf at school, Oatmeal coloured.

A Lough Neagh Sequence for the fishermen

1 UP THE Sh.o.r.e.

I.

The lough will claim a victim every year.

It has virtue that hardens wood to stone.

There is a town sunk beneath its water.

It is the scar left by the Isle of Man.

II.

At Toomebridge where it sluices towards the sea They've set new gates and tanks against the flow.

From time to time they break the eels' journey And lift five hundred stone in one go.

III.

But up the sh.o.r.e in Antrim and Tyrone There is a sense of fair play in the game.

The fishermen confront them one by one And sail miles out, and never learn to swim.

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