Read Poems 1960-2000 for Free Online Page A

days. But I can tell
    how it has been: the gas caught us walking
    on this path, and we fell.
    I feel a crystal, carolling lightness.
    Beside me I can see
    my newest self. It has happened again:
    division, more of me.
    Four, perhaps? We two stand up together,
    dazed, euphoric, and go
    to seek out our matching others, knowing
    that they should be two, now.
    My partner had been walking, I recall,
    a little way ahead.
    We find her. But there is only one. I
    look upon myself, dead.
8
    This is becoming ridiculous:
    the gas visits us regularly,
    dealing out death or duplication.
    I am eight people now – and four dead
    (these propped up against the trees in the
    gardens, by the gravel walk). We eight
    have inherited the pub, and shall,
    if we continue to display our
    qualities of durability,
    inherit the village, God help us.
    I see my image everywhere –
    feeding the hens, hoeing the spinach,
    peeling the potatoes, devising
    a clever dish with cabbage and eggs.
    I am responsible with and for
    all. If B (we go by letters now)
    forgets to light the fire, I likewise
    have forgotten. If C breaks a cup
    we all broke it. I am eight people,
    a kind of octopus or spider,
    and I cannot say it pleases me.
    Sitting through our long sleepless nights, we
    no longer play chess or poker (eight
    identical hands, in which only
    the cards are different). Now, instead,
    we plan our death. Not quite suicide,
    but a childish game: when the gas comes
    (we can predict the time within a
    margin of two days) we shall take care
    to be in dangerous places. I can
    see us all, wading in the river
    for hours, taking long baths, finding
    ladders and climbing to paint windows
    on the third storey. It will be fun –
    something, at last, to entertain us.
9
    Winter. The village is silent –
    no lights in the windows, and
    a corpse in every snowdrift.
    The electricity failed
    months ago. We have chopped down half
    the orchard for firewood,
    and live on the apples we picked
    in autumn. (That was a fine
    harvest-day: three of us fell down
    from high trees when the gas came.)
    One way and another, in fact,
    we are reduced now to two –
    it can never be one alone,
    for the survivor always
    wakes with a twin.
                                  We have great hopes
    of the snow. At this moment
    she is standing outside in it
    like Socrates. We work shifts,
    two hours each. But this evening
    when gas-time will be closer
    we are going to take blankets
    and make up beds in the snow –
    as if we were still capable
    of sleep. And indeed, it may
    come to us there: our only sleep.

10
    Come, gentle gas
    I lie and look at the night.
    The stars look normal enough –
    it has nothing to do with them –
    and no new satellite
    or comet has shown itself.
    There is nothing up there to blame.
    Come from wherever
    She is quiet by my side.
    I cannot see her breath
    in the frost-purified air.
    I would say she had died
    if so natural a death
    were possible now, here.
    Come with what death there is
    You have killed almost a score
    of the bodies you made
    from my basic design.
    I offer you two more.
    Let the mould be destroyed:
    it is no longer mine.
    Come, then, secret scented double-dealing gas.
    We are cold: come and warm us.
    We are tired: come and lull us.
    Complete us.
    Come. Please.

The Bullaun
    ‘Drink water from the hollow in the stone…’
    This was it, then – the cure for madness:
    a rock with two round cavities, filled with rain;
    a thing I’d read about once, and needed then,
    but since forgotten. I didn’t expect it here –
    not having read the guidebook;
    not having planned, even, to be in Antrim.
    ‘There’s a round tower, isn’t there?’ I’d asked.
    The friendly woman in the post office
    gave me directions: ‘Up there past the station,
    keep left, on a way further – it’s a fair bit –
    and have you been to Lough Neagh yet?’ I walked –
    it wasn’t more than a mile – to the stone phallus
    rising above its fuzz of beech