Near Hyde Bridge
The drop-down rush of descending water under Hyde Bridge,
The falling line of an endless river nocturne, wakens
My room in The
Glasshouse and gives me eyes for the rose dawn.
Ben Bulben is blurred as if seen through spring well water.
My cup of black coffee vapours steam above the Garravogue.
The hill lights above Thomas Connolly’s are bright like sunflowers.
They dim as the soft seep of pink first light wanders into
town,
Like a tramp Chagall fiddler, reshaping fingery shadows.
A pearl-grey heron stands sacerdotal, stalking the ripples.
A vee swells from the frantic feet of a line of cheeping
ducklings.
Pinions whispering, a grey flash of seagulls flaps and
glides.
The Atlantic tang from a hundred-foot wave takes me walking.
The sun stipples pastels on the river wall on Markievicz
Road.
Yesterday a Telford bus decanted tourists in macs there.
The wind whispers warm about the geraniums, hostas, and
cosmos.
On New Bridge a reel sings as an oil-slick trout breaks
water.
The furious fish fights for the slipstream of the shallow
rapids.
Streaking from side to side, it shakes its head, throws the
hook.
The grilse silver-grey river glides glassy under Hyde
Bridge,
Rushes in a rapid flume of current swirls down rocky
shelves,
Spins misty diamond-sparkle spray in a surge of dancing
drops.
That same clerkly heron stands spear-billed on a damp flat
grey rock,
His eyes clasping the still unsuspecting space above the
channel,
Motionless, as he waits for prey to come within the
kill-zone.
On Rockwood Parade a pale plaque remembers six soldiers
Who were shot there in a brothers’ war in July ’22.
Standing in circles of grey stone outside the Ulster Bank,
Like Harry Potter chanting the moongone night into day,
Yeats purrs a patter of poems through his dew-wet bronze
suit.
I wonder if he sweats, A Terrible Beauty is Born.
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