All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber
After the words of the magnificence and doom, After the vision of the splendor and the fear, They go out slowly into the flowery meadow, Carrying the casket, and lay it in the earth By the grave’s edge. The daisies bend and straighten Under the trailing skirts, and serious faces Look with faint relief, and briefly smile. Into this earth the flesh and wood shall melt
These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance, Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew, Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks Show sharply in it, as they might in snow. But it’s soon gone in the sun—what good does it do? The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees,
From the tower window the moon draws a silver maple’s shadow across a spangled lawn; horses rear, manes lashing the air, front legs floating. Half monarch,
Which represents you, as my bones do, waits, all pores open, for the stun of snow. Which will come, as it always does, between breaths, between nights of no wind and days of the nulled sun. And has to be welcome. All instinct wants to anticipate faceless fields, a white road drawn
My father in the night commanding No Has work to do. Smoke issues from his lips; He reads in silence. The frogs are croaking and the street lamps glow.
And then my mother winds the gramophone; The Bride of Lammermoor begins to shriek— Or reads a story— About a prince, a castle, and a dragon.
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count;
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