English Seven Strophes I was but what you’d brush with your palm, what your leaning brow would hunch to in evening’s raven-black hush. I was but what your gaze in that dark could distinguish: a dim shape to begin with, later – features, a face. It was you, on my right, on my left, with…

Swedish Sju strofer och dagar Jag var bara det, som du berörde med handen, över vilket du lutade pannan i nattens korpsvarta djup. Jag var bara det, som du vagt kunde skönja där nere; först oklarheten inkarnerad, långt senare – ansiktsdrag. Det var du som, het, i mitt vänstra och mitt högra öra skapade musslan…

Autobiography Sometimes when she would talk about herself my mother would say: My life was sad and quiet, I always walked on tip-toe. But if I got a little angry and stamped my foot the cups, which had been my mother’s, would tinkle on the dresser and make me laugh. At the moment of my…

Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication For Mary Heaney I. Sunlight There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard heated its iron, water honeyed in the slung bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled over the bakeboard, the reddening stove…

The Haw Lantern The wintry haw is burning out of season, crab of the thorn, a small light for small people, wanting no more from them but that they keep the wick of self-respect from dying out, not having to blind them with illumination. But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost it takes…

Lightenings viii The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise Were all at prayers inside the oratory A ship appeared above them in the air. The anchor dragged along behind so deep It hooked itself into the altar rails And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill, A crewman shinned and grappled down…