Two Poems:

Now the buried stones have risen and would almost talk
To me; now the tall hawthorn by the gate keeps making these
Snaggy passes at me under my dome of shouldered hay; now

Nimble blood has dried to my mud-caked knuckles, leaving
Two small crimson badges signifying nothing except the fact
I can't handle a slash-hook the way my neighbour can, who slices
Fuchsia and briar to a neat avenue of clean-cut branches; and now

The bees have taken over again the dark world above my head
Where they lead incessant, single-minded lives, boiling in the attic –

Isn't it time to step from shelter, breathe the free air, and say it?

                                               •

When that great conflagration had finished with us, I sat in the silence of rocks

Angled exactly against the gale that was still swallowing air from the southwest

And watched – on a cobbled stretch of sea bleached green and streaked by

Stripes of navy blue – two big loons sitting calmly on the swell, unruffled

By the blast, out of range of that passionate self-immolation that was the surf

Dashing itself against black rocks, a white mane riding its buckle-crown of green

And turning to a fleecy nothing, a salt collapse, then resurrection as grotted air

Where scattershots of rainbow shards kept netting light, to which these

Peaceful birds pay no attention, going at intervals under and staying there,

Then breaking back to air again, glancing round to glimpse each other, settling.

Eamon Grennan
The Quick of It
Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2005 by Eamon Grennan.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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