Monday, April 7, 2008

seamus heaney seemed appropriate

since I'm heading to Belfast today...

At Ardboe Point

Right along the lough shore
A smoke of flies
Drifts thick in the sunset.

They come shattering daintily
Against the windscreen,
The grill and bonnet whisper

At their million collisions:
It is to drive through
A hail of fine chaff.

Yet we leave no clear wake
For they open and close on us
As the air opens and closes.

Tonight when we put out our light
To kiss between the sheets
Their just audible siren will go

Outside the window,
Their invisible veil
Weakening the moonlight still further,

And the walls will carry a rash
Of them, a green pollen.
They’ll have infiltrated our clothes by morning.

If you put one under a lens
You’d be looking at a pumping body
With such outsize beaters for wings

That this visitation would seem
More drastic than Pharaoh’s
I’m told their mosquitoes

But I’d need forests and swamps
To believe it
For these are our innocent, shuttling

Choirs, dying through
Their own live empyrean, troublesome only
As the last veil on a dancer.

1 comment:

Jonathan said...

OK, I could do without the mosquitoes or midgies or whatever, but I do wish I could go to Belfast too! I hope you have a wonderful time!