The New Estate
Forget the corncrake’s elegy. Rusty
Iambics that escaped your discipline
Of shorn lawns, it is sustained by nature.
It does not grieve for you, nor for itself.
You remember the rolled gold of cornfields,
Their rustling of tinsel in the wind,
A whole field quivering like blown silk?
A shiver now runs through the laurel hedge,
And washing flutters like the swaying lines
Of a new verse. The high fidelity
Music of the newly-wed obscures your
Dedication to a life of loving
Money. What could they be for, those marble
Toilet fixtures, the silence of water-beds,
That book of poems you bought yesterday?
Copyright Credit: Ciaran Carson, "The New Estate" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2009 by Ciaran Carson. Reprinted by permission of Wake Forest University Press.
Source: Collected Poems (Wake Forest University Press, 2009)