Tall and shadowed is the man from behind
We'd follow the prints of his footsteps in kind

Through bramble and briar to our chest, to his knees
The brown and suede boots we would follow under trees

Guitar bags and candles and his things around the house
Strange metal trinkets which made strange metal sounds

The kisses with my mother before they never kissed again
And his father too,
whom I met in the street and awkwardly embraced
Love comes in lulls and in spates

Before the night comes cold and proper
When set against a fiery sky
The crooked limbs of a naked poplar
Have stirred a romance in my mind

And swaying with their kin and kind
My heavy heart asway in kind
Those wooden spines so hale and hearty
Like will-'o-wisps they'll soon depart me

The oversized doors made from panels of oak
From somewhere behind open heavy and slow,
for another akin
The creak of the wood as they let themselves in

Disturbing the hallowed and candlelit quiet
Turning the heads of the practicing pious
We are shook from a dream
By the rushing of wind through this place of esteem

Above the silhouettes of pines,
with needled edges blown and wild
Heroes collide!
Virgins and damsels are frozen in stride
Together by inches they turn in the sky

And brilliant the moon in her loftiest place
Diana's face aloft in space - and under her eye,
mahogany tables set out in the night,
wearing her light

Draped in her rays are the myriad faces,
Strangers in pairs and amid conversations
In gestures and signs and in whispers and mimes
Their stories take flight - I'm enthralled by their
tales uttered into the night

Here where the pines are as tall as the sky
Where the moon will forget all our faces
If I had their ear or if I had their graces
I would share in their solemn and secretive phrases

Through gaps in the trees I can see Dublin's pier
The Poolbeg stacks are surprisingly clear
Striped and remote, their billowing clouds
are a silvery choke

Here where the roads aren't routes that I know
They are comforting so and offer some bearing
I am followed on high by that pairing

Towers over buildings, towers over pines
Those two yonder towers are the most
on my mind

Here where the leaves are dramatically red,
quietly falling and littering bends
Here where the birches are a heavenly white,
those two yonder towers are the most on my mind

No rest till I'm dwarfed by those towering twins
No rest till I'm flush with the deafening drink
There a horizon and sparingly strewn,
with buoys and boats; sitting strange in the gloom

Far beyond the gable ends of dark suburban streets
Riding past the furthest flats where paths give way to fields

Where giant cranes with groaning frames are elevators into space
Looming over dark estates, unoccupied and halfway built
A regiment of vacant digs

Set out just like theatre props; a sort of play not yet begun
The porches laid with welcome rugs for when the future tenants come

And when they take up residence and get their keys and pay their rent
They'll surely never think of me as I have thought of them
The countless nights I've seen to spend, exploring every lamplit bend

Or how I'd trekked those distant places, before they'd laid the first foundations
Beyond the reach of tired feet, where fauns or fairies surely meet

The dark and curing plains are real and stretch for starry miles around
The rustle and din of windblown things, the rush of moonlit clouds

And soon from now when strangers come and pick the perfect house to live
And make it theirs and settle in and pick a room to put the crib
I'll stop the squeak of spinning wheels upon some distant mound or cliff
And moving closer to the lip; Dublin twinkles past the tip

Oh winter how soon you will leave me
How soon you'll bereave me
And though I'll remember your seasonal sights,
your evergreens and birches converging for miles
These things are not nearly enough
I want us to touch

To fashion you into some tangible thing
Some newlywed's ring, attached to a finger
That I may look down and remember you – winter

While somewhere yule-ash is being spread in the fields
That the old gods might hasten their yields
Or kept beneath pillows to silence a storm
I will lie beneath virgo, a lover forlorn