Poetry
Two Cuckoo Poems
THE WANDERING CUCKOO
WHILE sap runs out glad signals to the year And every budded tree looks brave again, In our far glens, when cuckoos talk I hear Blue silence throbbing with a pulse from Spain.
Surely some cuckoo in the ancient hills Revived rich promises to Aaron's race, Until the far sands glowed with summer thrills And pastures sang beneath God's dreaming face.
Ah 1 our forefathers heard no pulse of summer—. No cuckoo plea—when our own people fled In herdless companies from those fierce horsemen Who clamped our tillage into stony bread.
'Twas then in Connacht glens our gentle mothers— Bereft of cradles left to ruthless hands—
Could only cuddle white limbs' reared in grasses, And weep on mouths from lost raspberry-lands.
Yet, friendly cuckoo to those glens of sorrow, Within our doors no race of boors you'll see, But landless men, who bred a clan of nobles Gracing their lonely days with courtesy. .
You bring us days that have a sway of Spain, But when we shut our doors old shadows creep From floor, from stool—and all is still again With crickets ticking out the time of sleep.
P. R. Hicci,49.
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