AN IRISH LAKE
Suddenly in a thousand shining strings
And running spools and ever-dwindling rings
Round the mind's bowl, till at last all drop
Lumped and leaden again to one full stop.
AN IRISH LAKE
There in the hard light
Dark birds, pink-footed, dab and pick
Among the
add~ry
roots and marrowy stones,
And the blown waves blink and hiccup at the lake's
Lip. A late bee blares and drones on inland
Into a cone-point of silence. And I
Lying at the rhododendron's root
Look through five fingers' grille at the lake
Shaking, at the bare and backward plain, and
The running and bending hills that carry
Like a conveyer belt the bright snail-line
Of clouds along the sky all day unendingly.
There, far from the slack noose of rumour
That tightens into choking fact, I relax,
And sounds and sights and scents sail slowly by.
But suddenly, like delicate and tilted italics,
The up-standing birds stretch urgently away
Into the sky as suddenly grown grey.
Night rounds on Europe now. And I must go,
Before its hostile faces peer and pour
Over the mind's rim enveloping me, .
And my so-frightened thoughts dart here and there
Like trout among their grim stony gazes.
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