March Wind
Wind scours the bones of the living.
Mornings wake, bleary-eyed
from weeping the breezes.
Walls hold
but wind-noise still penetrates
to the core,
grinds back the comforts of myth
to the original rib.
Who are these, lighting their fire,
going through the motions of a day
with a wind pack
constantly worrying and tugging?
What would we say
to the stars of their eyes?
How could words cross
the tors of their teeth?
Clouds ride the blue
on an occasional sunny day,
snapping Kodak time back
to their anxious hearth
and, somehow,
a thrush does the job
of all creation in
its late winter station
attacking blustery dark
with reiterated song
and, through the abyss
of this relentless air,
a kestrel’s double blade
is working the wind
so that the eye might anchor
a mind to the land,
hold down its clatter
of loose galvanized
on a shed where
some poor turf is husbanded.
Dated pages
litter the ditch,
a sheepdog keeps to its blown fur
and the crocus shivers
to offer saffron to the world.
Nothing now in cold blood
could ever be witness here
to stirring branches as they catch fire.
from Carnival Masks (2014)
by Seán Lysaght
