Moon in the distance aglow on the dark horizon slivers of light shining
through the dark forest
In my tangle slivers of a different kind lapped away in the grey
Cat looked eyes moon bright steel on flesh left a quiver on the hard stone
Held the dying flesh bled and fled the scene in that ghostly night
@ neil furby
Ruth Ruth at sunrise, grooming horses.The bit, bridle, curry-comb of lovewas her business.
|
I
In Armagh or Tyrone
I fell between two stones.
In Armagh or Tyrone
on a morning in June
I fell between two stones.
In Armagh or Tyrone
on a morning in June
in 1951
I fell between two stones.
In Armagh or Tyrone
on a morning in June
in 1951
I fell between two stones
that raised me as their own.
II
I had one eye, just one,
they prised and propped open.
I had one eye, just one,
they prised and propped open
like a Fomorian's.
I had one eye, just one,
they prised and propped open
like a Fomorian's
with a fire-toughened pine.
I had one eye, just one,
they prised and propped open
like a Fomorian's
so all I looked upon
would itself turn to stone.
Paul Muldoon
Horse Latitudes
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2006 by Paul Muldoon. All n Boland
House of Shadows. Home of Simile
One afternoon of summer rain
my hand skimmed a shelf and I found
an old florin. Ireland, 1950.
We say like or as and the world is
a fish minted in silver and alloy,
an outing for all the children,
an evening in the Sandford cinema,
a paper cone of lemonade crystals and
say it again so we can see
androgyny of angels, edges to a circle,
the way the body works against the possible—
and no one to tell us, now or ever,
why it ends, why
it always ends.
I am holding
two whole shillings of nothing,
observing its heaviness, its uselessness.
And how in the cool shadow of nowhere
a salmon leaps up to find a weir
it could not even know
was never there.
Eavan Boland
Poetry
October 2006
