Lines Written in Dejection
When have I last looked on
a road I swerved across to miss a straying hen,
its verge not round-up’d, re-sown, planted, mown –
no float of cow-parsley or linnet’s wings;
a river where they’d let me light a fire
or cook a fish without a permit for a hazel rod;
a child who’d take a boiled sweet from an ageing man;
an ageing man who’d hand a child a sweet;
wild bees not wiped out by varroa mite;
a leopard of the moon, a bee-loud glade.
And now that I have come to sixty years,
I must endure the buzz and bleep of phones.
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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