Witness
By the crumbling fire we talked Animal-dazed by the heat While the lawyer unhooked the lamp From the peat-blackened rafters And climbed the circle of the stairs.
Without, the cattle, heavy for milking, Shuddered and breathed in the byre. 'It falls early these nights,' I said, Lifting the tongs to bruise a turf And hide the sound of argument upstairs From an old man, hands clenched On rosary beads and a hawthorn stick For hammering the floor— A nuisance in the working daytime, But now, signing a parchment, Suddenly important again, as once before. Cannily aware of his final scene, too, With bald head swinging like a stone In irresistible statement: 'It's rightly theirs; Or 'They'll never see stick of mine.'
Down in the kitchen, husband and wife Watched white ash form on the hearth, Nervously sharing my cigarettes, While the child wailed in the pram And a slow dark overcame fields and farm.
JOHN MONTAGE/0
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