And then these are two poems I wrote in Northern Ireland,
really.
Just-- these are very, sort of almost really conventional
poems of response to a place.
"Night."
"The night is July.
The aura is rain.
The bay is always at low tide.
Green slime covers the sand where
herons stop, look, and listen.
The sand is as thin as clay.
Men in the night leave their caravans
and run across black grass to the River Argideen
to claim a position for fishing, like waiting at baggage claim.
The people in the temperance hall
hold a dance that most of them watch from their chairs
bitterly.
They can see their shoes are history.
The world was remade before they died.
The herons on the lee are slick with slime, fermenting.
Lots of money is exchanged in the medieval town.
Beer is fomented in silver silos, and no fish swim.
One day down, carpe diem.
No one knows what's coming.
The nuclear weapons programs continue.
A boy in a trap drawn by an elegant horse
trots through Clonakilty.
Men watch, and women shop organic food
planted in the middle of gourmet olives and jellies.
Thanks and help are prayer words in fair trade and churches.
Just go in and have a drink at dark.
It's a kind of Sabbath.
In a public house, you feel safe with the others.
By now, you know the Black River has
fish and flowers on it, white and shaped
like strawberry plants.
Two neon kingfishers speed by blue.
Everyone is there for everyone else's fun.
Those men in the night aren't so bad.
A body-- this is what it feels, and this is what it feels like.
Sites of massacre and ashes, tin-topped rubble,
porcelain ovens, jails, a waiting hospital.
Not when it's eternal low tide in a place outside,
and birds drain the sand with their appetites."