richard murphy: special issue || swallows
TRANSCRIPT
SwallowsAuthor(s): Richard MurphySource: Irish University Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, Richard Murphy: Special Issue (Spring, 1977), p.33Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25477149 .
Accessed: 15/06/2014 23:44
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Shelter
Girl with a sheaf of rye-straw in your arms
How much you carry from a loaded trailer
Parked at the door in a stray sunny shaft
At the tail end of summer, deep into the barn
To store for thatch, if ever we get the weather
Or the time, before winter sets in, how much
You help me, child, in the hour after school, Hour of your release, face wet with tears
That well up out of a cruelty done to you, Bruise-marks around your lips, a speechless harm, How much you help me to make the dark inside
Glitter with sheaves bound firm to keep out storm.
Hear how they rustle as we lay them down:
Their broken heads are thrashed clean of grain.
Swallows
She wades through wet rushes,
Long autumn grass,
Over rusty barbed wire
And stone walls that collapse,
With a black rubber torch
That keeps flickering off, After midnight, to reach
A shed with a tin roof.
She lifts away door-boards?
O sweet herbal hay! Her beam dazzles birds
She can't identify.
Timorous wings in wormy rafters
Flap to get out.
Then she spots in a light-shaft A red boot unlaced.
The flock's tremor increases
In her torch's coop. Where is he? She sees
A white arm sticking up.
33
This content downloaded from 195.34.78.137 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 23:44:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions