First Move

Author:

Padraic Fallon

And just when he was all in it,

From head to foot the welling heartbeat,

This thing, this town, ceased to articulate for him.

Some ogre behind the font?

Some field god tired of making wheat?

Shocked when a child sister

Was walked in her deadbox to the old church

He saw the light turn sinister:

Some one had moved the morning

With an almost visible lurch

And set it down askew.

Afterwards certainly all world was

Out of the true

Morning after morning.

From

Poetry Nation No 4 (1975)

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