— for Seamus Heaney*

Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.

Our unbraiding love  . . .
Fingers no longer twining,
  .  .  .  Cats cradle broken.

O to be burning—
Completely, live at the stake,
  .  .  .  What a way to go.

Dawn of mind, riding spirited dragon,

Broken claw of falling moon, still in sky,

Flash and roar of blinding Eastern sun,

Hiking the crest, on chains of mountain.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Lines of feather etched,
Petrified on the sea shores,
Our driftwood bird wings.

The Blue Falcon, cross the spire,
Waits in the gables of the white
House.  Wounded in youth by crush
Of air, spent, a wisp perched
In the aerie dark with a view of mountains
Blue as ice under glacier.  The wooden
Church from the other side clutches
The sky but the Falcon blue is lost
In a tuft of cloud that bobs but never
Kills.  On this strike he is sheathed in stealth
The dull talons slip as they dry
In the tented air, the songbirds at play
In the high-ground underneath warble
And chide but the Falcon cannot hear
The Falcon near.  His heart is soft
And muted in the breast, his ears
Are dumb to their tickling-songs.  

Before the Falcons time, over
The tilling fields, dropped his world
In the spoils where splendour burst in green,
Rain meant the feathers ran and the woods,
A banquet of game, were bounty's breach
Fording blue currents he was
A fisher in the sun, but the sun
Sank in his drowning sky no store
From plateau to quarry the drought of days
Moved a castle felled in the dancing
Dust, his wings broke in the shuttered
Eye of the sun and etched his form
Into grey silhouette.  

Now, the Blue Falcon, jeered
In the branches of the rooted air
Above the yellowed grass, under the pines
And a great blue mountain, stirs a Druid
Shape, vaporous, in the cauldron
Of the attic in the white house
A throw of stones crossways from
The sacred yews of the steeple spire.

Her languid voice
Drew me in, drooped,
And tentacle hair wrapping,
My feet fell before hers,
Sinking in the faraway lost pool,
The mortality in the sands,
And even the stars, snuffed
Out of darkness and fire
Became the light of the world,
The hushed day breaking
With welling waters and salt.
How can dream be lived,
Within dream?  Must I swear
As I fall into bliss?

If I should die with a shunted echo hear me,
Lost fabled one, my paltry heart the snows,
The warmth rides of the chiding winter sun,
The melody and rustling in cantata leaves,

Whose strings of one, plaintive guitar, strung
By breaths birthing breaks, your tracing lips,
White birds, water wings miraculous, not so
Stunning as your steps float above the water,

I am nothing, less, you shine pure, most of all
More than any heart could tender, how could
An empty house, abridgment only, unhinging
Doors coursing reason hold the new day sun?

As flame was my doom, love hear my thesis—
Should I die, look for me in the loom chrysalis.

Whole world, new outside,
Noon is like a cave inside,
  .  .  .  Nerd in a bubble.

Narcissist craves friends,
Ignores those without mirrors,
  .  .  .  Only sees himself.

Once was a grey man  .  .  .
Spent his days spinning drivel,
  .  .  .  Who once, never was.

In faith, sanctity   .  .  .
Dear Goddess, HP is full,
  .  .  .  Of drek and bull *****.