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Two hundred of us
crush into carpeted silence -
mostly fingerers of words,
pebbles to be turned and turned
till they fire and meld.
We listen to the Irish poet
who once dreamed of London’s
distant poetry addresses.
Now other dreamers
must be dreaming that he dwells
in these out-of-reach places.
He speaks in rhythms satisfying
as the fold of furrow and ridge
across rabbit-brown fields,
in words that sail over the carolling
of children’s unripened voices
in the concert hall below,
over the gamelan’s chime and ting,
over the chirps of toddlers parked
in the room with glass walls,
over the running river wefted
with threads of dazzle light.
When he reads his poem I see
the ‘A’ of his childhood alphabet
tip into ‘MARINERS’ REST’,
letters large with the allure
of mystery, lined up
on a wooden roof, against
the blue of sky - letters
that taunted me each day
as I jolted past on the school bus
till at last, triumphant,
I straddled them, rode away
into a wildness glory touches.
From The North No 7 (1989)
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