All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied Specks to range on window-sills at home, On shelves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst into nimble- Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain. Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
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 fulfillment.
A combine
groaning its way late
Bled seeds across
its work-light.
A forest fire
smoldered 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.
I am
afraid.
Sound
has stopped in the day
And
the images reel over
And
over. Why all those tears,
The
wild grief on his face
Outside
the taxi? The sap
Of
mourning rises
In our
waving guests.
You
sing behind the tall cake
Like a
deserted bride
Who
persists, demented,
And
goes through the ritual.
When I
went to the Gents
There
was a skewered heart
And a
legend of love. Let me
Sleep
on your breast to the airport.
Here is the
girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced,
prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled
the wet fern of her hair
And made an
exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at
her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow,
perishable treasure:
Her broken nose
is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes
blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus
confessed
His gradual ease
with the likes of this:
Murdered,
forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl,
outstaring axe
And
beatification, outstaring
What
had begun to feel like reverence