Michael Longley

for Seamus

What’s the Greek for boat,

You ask, old friend,

Fellow voyager

Approaching Ithaca –

Oh, flatulent sails,

Wave-winnowing oars,

Shingle-scrunching keel –

But, so close to home,

There’s a danger always

Of amnesiac storms,

Waterlogged words.

19 July 2011

for Bel Mooney

Imagine a shallow glass box

About nine inches by seven,

She writes, a bundle of papers

Inside, tied with brown ribbon,

Photos of our battlefield trip

Interleaved with war poems

She has copied out in longhand.

A shrapnel ball (in cellophane

For protection) nestles there

And rusty shrapnel casing

And the chestnuts and acorns

We examine in one photo.

In another, under a cross,

What can we be looking at?

Embroidered postcards evoke

Men who fought and loved and died,

She says. I who wrote the poems

Imagine a shallow glass box.

One wreath had blackberry clusters
Intertwined. Was it a blackbird
Or wren that briefly sang a graveside
Aria, godlike in its way, a psalm?
(He will defend you under his wing.
You will be safe under his feathers.)

5 October 2013

For Lucy McDiarmid

I have been thinking about the music for my funeral –

Liszt’s transcription of that Schumann song, for instance,

‘Dedication’ – inwardness meets the poetry of excess –

When you lead me out of your apartment to demonstrate

In the Halloween-decorated lobby the perfect acoustic

Of the stairwell, and stand among pumpkins, cobwebby

Skulls, dancing skeletons, and blow kisses at the ceiling,

Whistling Great War numbers – ‘Over There’, ‘It’s a Long,

Long Way’, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ (the refrain) –

As though for my father who could also whistle them,

Trench memories, your eyes closed, your head tilted back,

Your cheeks filling up with air and melody and laughter.

I hold the banister. I touch your arm. Listen, Lucy,

There are songbirds circling high up in the stairwell.