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01 November 2009

November Poem of the Month

Brogue on an Empty Road


the fields are lonely, Lovely
while rabbits dislodged at the sound of me
and I by the magpies above
in anonymous trees
spring quick with the consonantal heft
past ivy-sleek windings and streaks
of whatever is left from whatever was said


unseen cattle shadow my steps
the other side the ditch the hedge
or else my foreign feet
echo their clumsy phobias
their bovine gentle bulk


Ben Bulben’s head sage with clouds today,
distant as eyes of livestock
watching solitude and glad of it

‘Are y’on the wrong road?’
a timeless, wind-worn farmer asks
but who’s to know
and how high lifts the ancient slope
and how far goes the growing thing


I reach beneath the bramble-branches of the rose
searching for a tuber that goes away, away
a long way back

beyond where hope has opened out
into lonely, Lovely,
into now.




~ Sørina

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