Travelling Soul Sutra, and: In Glasnevin Cemetery, and: Onward

Travelling Soul Sutra

for Dave Caffrey

The wind is in from the Atlantic.Oh do not close the window,let the night beat salt into the room,let the travelling soul find rest.

The wind is in from the south-west,from a small graveyard at the sea's edgewhere our friend lies with the long grassunder a faint haze of stars.

I hear the sea's long thunder across the bar,I hear the rain come sweeping down the hill,his voice at the window like a dipping terncalling at night, from far out to sea.

Oh hold the window open, love, for mewhen the time comes, when the wind comes.Let the night beat salt into the room,let the travelling soul find rest.

The wind is in from the south-west,and Dave is lying under gravel and grasswho was a friend to learning and a good man.His bones are settled now, his soul is travelling on.

In Glasnevin Cemetery

The ground is heavy clay and the heavy spadea live thing in my grip as I cut the ground.Pale sky, pale rushing clouds, a sister's handssifting your father's ashes on your mother's grave.

Your sisters stand and watch, their lovely daughtersgathered in close as this one last time you gift hima daughter's gesture: here's rosemary, for remembrance—I open a cup of ground as you bed it in;

here are wallflowers (you sift in compost, pat the ground firm)tough and tenacious as any Dub—and I am struck,shook, to think what I owe this man I loved,this woman I never met laid in the same clay.

We finish the work, I spade the ground neat and flat;you rise from your crouch, a hand in the small of your back.Her eyes, his eyes in your look, the twin dark starsthat have held me spellbound since the day we met.

And so life goes on, borne down on the wind,I am thinking this as I heft the spade and turnto walk away, no longer sure what, if anything, I believe,until your small strong hand takes a grip of mine.

Clay and ash on the wind, on our shoes, high clouds,a keen cold wind, your sisters' laughter, their daughtersstepping clear—your father and mother in the wind—and one day, my love, we two in the wind—

What of it? The wind blows from always to always,and didn't you tell me once, and didn't I tell you,this is for always, the wind and whoever spins itand we two borne up on it beyond the grave?

Onward

We turn to run before the wind,the long swell rising up with us in quiet.

You are below in lamplightbent over pencil and chart, alertand silent, attentive to the work.

The wheel turns in my hand, a live thing,then settles, soothes to the long hissof the wake running out behind us.

We have made our courseand our peace; we settle to it.