Irish Poetry

That morning under a pale hood of sky   

I heard the unambiguous scrape of spackling   

against the side of our wickered, penitential house.   

The day mirled and clabbered   

in the thick, stony light,   

and the rooks’ feathered narling   

astounded the salt waves, the plush coast.   

I lugged a bucket past the forked   

coercion of a tree, up toward   

the pious and nictitating preeminence of a school,   

hunkered there in its gully of learning.   

Only later, by the galvanized washstand,   

while gaunt, phosphorescent heifers   

swam beyond the windows,   

did the whorled and sparky gib of the indefinite   

wobble me into knowledge.   

Then, I heard the ghost-clink of milk bottle   

on the rough threshold   

and understood the meadow-bells   

that trembled over a nimbus of ragwort—   

the whole afternoon lambent, corrugated, puddle-mad.