I will forget all that was cultivated, all that was told
How to be beautiful: The sights that made
My companion point with his arm and cry: Wonderful,
The sweep of the land, the variegated shade
Of the mountain sides! He knew that it must be
Beautiful, someone had said so.
To me
God's truth was such a thing you could not mention
With being ashamed of its commonness: -
First there is
A dark lane between a garden wall and a gable -
A vegetable garden too, for yellow cabbage leaves
Sometimes are caught on the jutting spikes of masonry
And on the tops of nettles -
Ah that lane, a short-cut to Clonsilla
Worn in the middle
Where a stream of dirty water ran
Its sloping banks grew broken bottles like grass
My God baptised me there by the hands of John.
There is a cart-pass in Drumnagrilla -
I could cry, almost, remembering its excitement in July
When mowing with an old scythe the rushes that fringed the rim of the ruts
I learned how not to die.
