Part 34 (2/2)

Death would be like a night spent in the wood: At first light they'd be back in the house of life.

(The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).

But death and human beings took second place When he trotted off the path and started barking At another dog in broad daylight just barking Back at him from the far bank of a river.

And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first, The toad who'd overheard in the beginning What the dog was meant to tell. 'Human beings,' he said (And here the toad was trusted absolutely), 'Human beings want death to last forever.'

Then Chukwu saw the people's souls in birds Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees Nor any way back to the house of life.

And his mind reddened and darkened all at once And nothing that the dog would tell him later Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves In obliterated light, the toad in mud, The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.

The Strand

The dotted line my father's ashplant made

On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won't wash away.

The Walk

Glamoured the road, the day, and him and her

And everywhere they took me. When we stepped out Cobbles were riverbed, the Sunday air A high stream-roof that moved in silence over Rhododendrons in full bloom, foxgloves And hemlock, robin-run-the-hedge, the hedge With its deckled ivy and thick shadows Until the riverbed itself appeared, Gravelly, shallowy, summery with pools, And made a world rim that was not for crossing.

Love brought me that far by the hand, without The slightest doubt or irony, dry-eyed And knowledgeable, contrary as be d.a.m.ned; Then just kept standing there, not letting go.

So here is another longshot. Black and white.

A negative this time, in dazzle-dark, Smudge and pallor where we make out you and me, The selves we struggled with and struggled out of, Two shades who have consumed each other's fire, Two flames in sunlight that can sear and singe, But seem like wisps of enervated air, After-wavers, feathery ether-s.h.i.+fts ...

Yet apt still to rekindle suddenly If we find along the way charred gra.s.s and sticks And an old fire-fragrance lingering on, Erotic woodsmoke, witchery, intrigue, Leaving us none the wiser, just better primed To speed the plough again and feed the flame.

At the Wellhead

Your songs, when you sing them with your two eyes closed

As you always do, are like a local road We've known every turn of in the past That midge-veiled, high-hedged side-road where you stood Looking and listening until a car Would come and go and leave you lonelier Than you had been to begin with. So, sing on, Dear shut-eyed one, dear far-voiced veteran, Sing yourself to where the singing comes from, Ardent and cut off like our blind neighbour Who played the piano all day in her bedroom.

Her notes came out to us like hoisted water Ravelling off a bucket at the wellhead Where next thing we'd be listening, hushed and awkward.

That blind-from-birth, sweet-voiced, withdrawn musician Was like a silver vein in heavy clay.

Night water glittering in the light of day.

But also just our neighbour, Rosie Keenan.

She touched our cheeks. She let us touch her braille In books like books wallpaper patterns came in.

Her hands were active and her eyes were full Of open darkness and a watery s.h.i.+ne.

She knew us by our voices. She'd say she 'saw'

Whoever or whatever. Being with her Was intimate and helpful, like a cure You didn't notice happening. When I read A poem with Keenan's well in it, she said, 'I can see the sky at the bottom of it now.'

At Banagher

Then all of a sudden there appears to me

The journeyman tailor who was my antecedent: Up on a table, cross-legged, ripping out A garment he must recut or resew, His lips tight back, a thread between his teeth, Keeping his counsel always, giving none, His eyelids steady as wrinkled horn or iron.

Self-absenting, both migrant and ensconced; Admitted into kitchens, into clothes His touch has the power to turn to cloth again All of a sudden he appears to me, Unopen, unmendacious, unillumined.

<script>