Deep-Sworn
Others because you did not keep.
Paltry years of gleaning
in the fields of others’ mothers
ceased when your field fell to me.
It was the feast of Thanksgiving.
‘Dead’ is an old word with a face.
Not ‘passed away’, nor ‘put to sleep’, not ____.
You kept out, kept away, kept from.
I’d have curled up on your deathbed
like a dog we were that deep-sworn.
Yet always in the pantry of preserves
jam-jars of jewel light keeping innermost
lemons, littlenecks, beetroot, quince
or when aproned we open up the Joy of Cooking
suddenly I meet your face.
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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