Ploughman and Other Poems

Scrap iron - 
  A brown mountain at the Dublin docks: - 
  Twisted motor chassis
  Engines that once possessed creative energy
  Stoves, wheels,
  Jumbled tumbled
A catalogue-maker's puzzle.

They wandered through the dark places and they kept
The prideful passionate horse tight-reined that would have leapt
The fence dividing star from meaner dust,
To trample down the corn which yields all men a crust.

The holes in my coat of want
Were the praise of good clothing.
Her chill indifference vaunt
Whom I loved was the proving
Of earnest young loving.

I followed Wisdom
A night and a night
And a day and a day
Clay-knowing to spite.

I saw an old white goat on the slope of Slieve Donard,
Nibbling daintily at the herb leaves that grow in the crevasses,
And I thought of James Stephens - 
He wrote of an old white goat within my remembering,
Seven years ago I read - 
Now it comes back
Full of the dreaming black beautiful crags.

Not yet half-drest
O tardy bride!
And the priest
And the bridegroom and the guests
Have been waiting a full hour.

She walked with me yesterday
Guiding my plough
Straight from headland to headland….
Lament with me now.