Like a painting it is set before o
But less brittle, ageless; these c
Are renewed daily with variations
Of light and distance that no pain
Achieves or suggests. Then there

And one said, This man can sing;
Let’s listen to him. But the othe
Dirt on his mind, said, No, let’s
Queer him. And the first, being w
Consented. So the Thing came

The furies are at home
in the mirror; it is their address
Even the clearest water,
if deep enough can drown.
Never think to surprise them.

It is calm.
It is as though
we lived in a garden
that had not yet arrived
at the knowledge of

One night of tempest I arose and
Along the Menai shore on dreaming
The wind was strong, and savage sw
And the waves blustered on Caerna
But on the morrow, when I passed

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl call
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening

I am the farmer, stripped of love
And thought and grace by the land’
But what I am saying over the fie
Desolate acres, rough with dew,
Is, Listen, listen, I am a man li

You go up the long track
That will take a car, but is best
On slow foot, noting the lichen
That writes history on the page
Of the grey rock. Trees are about

The poem in the rock and
The poem in the mind
Are not one.
It was in dying
I tried to make them so.

We were a people taut for war; the
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retr