Ten Kavanagh Poems

We borrowed the loan of Kerr’s big ass
To go to Dundalk with butter,
Brought him home the evening before the market
An exile that night in Mucker.

O leafy yellowness you create for me
A world that was and now is poised above time,
I do not need to puzzle out Eternity
As I walk this arboreal street on the edge of a town.

I am here in a garage in Monaghan. 
It is June and the weather is warm.

'Erected to the memory of Mrs. Dermot O'Brien'

O commemorate me where there is water, 
Canal water, preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer.

A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward
Of a chest hospital: square cubicles in a row
Plain concrete, wash basins - an art lover's woe,
Not counting how the fellow in the next bed snored.

No, no, no, I know I was not important as I moved
Through the colourful country, I was but a single
Item in the picture, the name, not the beloved.

They laughed at one I loved -
The triangular hill that hung
Under the Big Forth.

Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.

My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -
There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn tonight,
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.