Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

M. L. McCarthy

print this page

Night piece

In low lane,
A tended cottage, one of three,
Crouches self-disciplined inside the free
Rankness of grass. A woman stands by the gate.
She presses the fragile, swaying gate with her hand.
She looks at the trees across the field:
They sway and huddle together;
And she hears, two fields away, the lumpish bull move in his tether;
And over her head the day crashes to pieces,
As the stealthy-pacing anarchist darkness releases
Rich scents from the flowers at her back,
The yield
Of their thick vegetable senses, cramped
In the chain of the garden, civilized, order-stamped,
Each side of the crazy paving track.
Above the trees, farther and farther away,
A small black bird whirling agains the sky
Puzzles the eye
As the night imps come out and rout the remains of the day,
Till the bird whirls faster
As if to cast her
Small plumes all four ways. The woman by the gate
Fingers her apron, thinking of something else;
Screws up her eyes at the bird, but something else
Beats in her mind as she stand at the gate,
Puckers her narrow brow. Flower
And sod spiral their scents. The hour
Is late, late, late.
 
The hour is late.

Page(s) 21

Back to top