I can\u2019t say that the day smiled on us, or that anything smiled,
\nAs we dared the wet earth in our wet digging clothes.
\nThe late Mrs. Cockburn was in no mood to chat. It was she,
\nAfter all, who was being evicted by a cruel remote-control:
\nA letter sent from Toronto that saw the summer spoilt.
\nShe had just published a good book, her autobiography
\nThat kept her friends straight and her enemies crooked,
\nBut as if the world needed to show a woman of quality
\nWhat indifference meant, or how landlords could still be shit,
\nThe letter was not an offer for film rights but a notice to quit.<\/p>\n
We approached the bed of agapanthi in a deathly quiet. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n That early summer\u2019s day: it must have been early, that day, Here by the cross-roads between two Electoral Areas. You needed your own voters\u2019 names that carried weight The last seats in a tight election: so much depended upon us. But while I waited for you to come back in your old Merc<\/em> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Early April suddenly ablaze and unexpected pear blossom <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here are the first dried leaves of a very dry season, Only to come upon what was once a colour Agapanthus I can\u2019t say that the day smiled on us, or that anything smiled, As we dared the wet earth in our wet digging clothes. The late Mrs. Cockburn was in no mood to chat. It was she, After all, who was being evicted by a cruel remote-control: A letter sent from Toronto that saw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[333,334],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nWhat I thought was umbellatus<\/em> and a big mistake
\nFor the small place where she was headed was, as a matter
\nOf fact and not any other kind of insufferable organic fact,
\nA huge clump of the smaller orientalis<\/em>, sometimes called
\nAgapanthus mooreanus<\/em>, and perfect, as I should have
\nKnown. I knew that Mrs. Consuela White was up in Lismore
\nAnd would soon be on the phone to me. Mrs. Cockburn
\nAlso knew that, though they were old friends, Mrs White\u2019s chilling
\nRemarks, her wicked shaudenfreude<\/em>, could kill African lilies.<\/p>\nForgetting the Registers<\/h4>\n
\nBecause cut flowers were still falling from their wicker-work
\nAround a picture of the Sacred Heart, that day you spoke
\nSo abruptly to yourself; then turned, telling me to stay<\/p>\n
\nYou had gotten two draft registers confused. The names
\nWe carried in the back seat, thumbed and stained,
\nWere Jackie Fahey\u2019s. Anyway, they were not ours.<\/p>\n
\nIn a district where power was already parched dry
\nWith bad news from elsewhere. I got out, without asking why,
\nAnd stood waiting for names that might deliver, yet,<\/p>\n
\nSwallows flitted in and out like personation officers
\nGrown bored, a distant pheasant grew scandalous
\nWith comment, pink earth was indelible with burning furze.<\/p>\n
\nI was interviewed and spilled the beans. It was pheasant
\nAnd swallow made me recite all the names: their distant
\nAnd sacred purpose came for me, leaving others in the dark.<\/p>\nThe Unexpected<\/h4>\n
\nAs rampant as de Chardin\u2019s sudden forms of life, as
\nDelicate as the lacquer-work left over from a raid
\nOf winter that scattered so many things since autumn \u2013
\nYou could hardly fathom what April brought in on the breeze,
\nWhat organic matter-of-fact things, what an impolite cascade
\nOf broken crockery in pink and green. It\u2019s like that election
\nHeard in the distance, beyond the fat privet hedge,
\nAn election that has set the traffic lights on edge
\nAnd caused this collision of ideas. From our quiet section
\nI can hear anxieties rolling in. But are these not the same as last
\nTime? Is she not the same? And he, is he not like a gardener
\nGone berserk, flat cap askew, trying to make regular
\nWhat swarms; life itself, that is, now swarming on the grass?<\/p>\nYet Another Autumn<\/h4>\n
\nSettling discreetly but finally in a white-washed
\nCorner, permanent and inevitable; puritan, even,
\nWith a guild-like reverence for finished prints.
\nNothing but chlorophyll has been working here,
\nOnly to disappear by now into the printing press
\nOf a dried soil. I walk over the cracked plates
\nOf a busy year, that curious willow pattern
\nOf browned rims and veins turning dull blue
\nOf spent potato stalks and trimmed bamboos,<\/p>\n
\nSupplement of the Irish Times<\/em>, as promising as
\nApril when the sun\u2019s warm rays curled its pages:
\nSomething to do with a promise that\u2019s very real,
\nFashion last April, the effect of light and rain
\nWorking like de Kooning upon our chaos within \u2013
\nConsider the leaf grown and the leaf made in ink,
\nAnd how both may settle in a corner of our lost year
\nAs two real but distinct lithographs of time
\nPassing through, of print made to stop and think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"