Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

To Ireland

huger than themselves —and God making words words Abortion Child I thought: You live somewhere deeper than the well I live down in. Deeper than anything from me or him. No but it took me time to see you, thirty earth years. 3. To Ireland By the Granary River the landlord says, “All these things— the lambing—the commonage— are good—yes—but they are not God.” Looking out over us with a white and English eye. 272 door in the mountain * * * Oh yes they are but by the Granary River we shut down seven hundred years. My mother was in it, and hers, and hers, my great-grandmother, hers died in the black room, and her mother, mother to mother, shut down and opened wrong. Home I left my clothes and books my skin a snake —the only one in the country! Our sign life twice * * * Scarab rolling a ball of dung across the ground scarab hieroglyph: to come into being: scarab rolling with the sun across the sky Atlantic * * * No one’s a house for me anymore the cradle of the real life 273 ...