Birds Sigh for the Air
unt lacrimae rerum
Bird sighs for the air? There are those
who would insist air sighs for the bird.
All that bluster and expanse nothing more
than a reaching out towards the least
fraction of itself – a flicker of wren through
summer briar, one note from a firecrest’s song.
Everything is the shape of the longing
it was built to hold. Even the olive wears
the curve of the stone it carries in its heart.
And you? Your empty arms confess
to everything they held once and then lost,
or longed to hold but never came to hold.
Your arms, filled, all those things
you are holding now – things you desire,
things you have yet to lose.
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 116:
A WB Yeats Special Issue
This essential Yeats anniversary publication is edited by Vona Groarke and includes responses to Yeats’s legacy and readings of his poems from public figures as diverse as Bill Whelan, Neil Jordan, Colm Tóibín, Frank McGuinness, Mary Costello and John Banville, along with new poems responding to Yeats’s work by Irish and international poets such as Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds, Philip Schultz, Sinéad Morrissey and Harry Clifton. The issue also includes Yeats’s poetry collections, reviewed by leading poets as if just published. Now also available in hardback.
"superb special edition" John Boland, Irish Independent
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