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Maighread Medbh

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After Frost

You took a large knife, dipped it in hot water
and spread icing over the cake.
Then you came back and with the flat side
spiked it until you grew a field of white grass.

You know how to do many things you don't value.
You know how to make hot honey with lemons and cloves
like the sun in painting mood on the wrangled hedgerows.
You know how to make frost sound like dried leaves.

There was a world yesterday that was green and brown
and brave flashes of red jumped from the bushes.
We forget it now in this place of frozen growth
where we could be tracking across the land of the bear.

You can make things clear by taking away crumpled papers,
washing the walls and giving them a new colour,
so for weeks we are in the nose of new things
beginning to believe we can grasp our lives.

A small hand likes to place itself in the sheath of your fingers
                                                                 and palm.
The child has every trust that frost and wind will only hurt
if you deliver him to the artist beyond,
abandoning your own knife, your cloth and your dripping brush.

Page(s) 9

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