ORTALON IN BALLYNAHINCH
Mid July, a deluge, a marriage
and a hillside church. Ample time
to dress a brace of buntings,
kept in the dark, blinded like lovers,
gorged on millet, grapes and figs
then drowned in balls of Armagnac
and baked for however long
it takes to blanch a heart.
And if beneath the photographer’s
cape, you taste those other lives –
liqueur soaked rambles in the thermals
of the Pyrenees, grapeshot
through Sahara and Camargue –
let it be a ghostly flutter
or something approaching order
that has one yellowhammer house –
frau rise again, to mind the heavens
and dust the stars into a paper bag.