New and Selected Poems Read Online Free PDF

the ocean,
    cobbling the running foam.
       
     
    And by the waterfall, Colman’s son,
haggard, spent, frost-bitten Sweeney,
Ronan of Drumgesh’s victim,
is sleeping at the foot of a tree.

Sweeney’s Last Poem
     
     
    There was a time when I preferred
the turtle-dove’s soft jubilation
as it flitted round a pool
    to the murmur of conversation.
       
     
    There was a time when I preferred
the blackbird singing on the hill
and the stag loud against the storm
    to the clinking tongue of this bell.
       
     
    There was a time when I preferred
the mountain grouse crying at dawn
to the voice and closeness
    of a beautiful woman.
       
     
    There was a time when I preferred
wolf-packs yelping and howling
to the sheepish voice of a cleric
    bleating out plainsong.
       
     
    You are welcome to pledge healths
and carouse in your drinking dens;
I will dip and steal water
    from a well with my open palm.
       
     
    You are welcome to that cloistered hush
of your students’ conversation;
I will study the pure chant
of hounds baying in Glen Bolcain.
       
     
    You are welcome to your salt meat
and fresh meat in feasting-houses;
I will live content elsewhere
    on tufts of green watercress.
       
     
    The herd’s sharp spear wounded me
and passed clean through my body.
Ah Christ, who disposed all things, why
    was I not killed at Moira?
       
     
    Of all the innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember an open bed
    above the lough in Mourne.
       
     
    Of all the innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember bedding down
    above the wood in Glen Bolcain.
       
     
    To you, Christ, I give thanks
for your Body in communion.
Whatever evil I have done
in this world, I repent.

The Underground
     
     
    There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
    Upon you before you turned to a reed
       
     
    Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
    Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.
       
     
    Honeymooning, mooning around, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
    Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons
       
     
    To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
Bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.

Sloe Gin
     
     
    The clear weather of juniper
darkened into winter.
She fed gin to sloes
    and sealed the glass container.
       
     
    When I unscrewed it
I smelled the disturbed
tart stillness of a bush
    rising through the pantry.
       
     
    When I poured it
it had a cutting edge
and flamed
    like Betelgeuse.
       
     
    I drink to you
in smoke-mirled, blue-black,
polished sloes, bitter
and dependable.

Chekhov on Sakhalin
     
    For Derek Mahon
     
    So, he would pay his ‘debt to medicine’.
But first he drank cognac by the ocean
With his back to all he travelled there to face.
    His head was swimming free as the troikas
       
     
    Of Tyumin, he looked down from the rail
Of his thirty years and saw a mile
Into himself as if he were clear water:
    Lake Baikhal from the deckrail of the steamer.
       
     
    So far away, Moscow was like lost youth.
And who was he, to savour in his mouth
Fine spirits that the puzzled literati
    Packed off with him to a penal colony –
       
     
    Him, born, you may say, under the counter?
At least that meant he knew its worth. No cantor
In full throat by the iconostasis
    Got holier joy than he got from that glass
       
     
    That shone and warmed like diamonds warming
On some pert young cleavage in a salon,
Inviolable and affronting.
    He felt the glass go cold in the midnight sun.
       
     
    When he staggered up and smashed it on the stones
It rang as clearly as the convicts’ chains
That haunted him. All through the months to