Another September - Thomas Kinsella

Dreams fled away, this country bedroom, raw

With the touch of the dawn, wrapped in a minor peace,

Hears through an open window the garden draw

Long pitch black breaths, lay bare its apple trees,

Ripe pear trees, brambles, windfall-sweetened soil,

Exhale rough sweetness against the starry slates.

Nearer the river sleeps St. John's, all toil

Locked fast inside a dream with iron gates.

Domestic Autumn, like an animal

Long used to handling by those countrymen,

Rubs her kind hide against the bedroom wall

Sensing a fragrant child come back again

- Not this half-tolerated consciousness

That plants its grammar in her yielding weather

But that unspeaking daughter, growing less

Familiar where we fell asleep together.

Wakeful moth wings blunder near a chair,

Toss their light shell at the glass, and go

To inhabit the living starlight. Stranded hair

Stirs on still linen. It is as though

The black breathing that billows her sleep, her name,

Drugged under judgement, waned and - bearing daggers

And balances–down the lampless darkness they came,

Moving like women : Justice, Truth, such figures.

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Thomas Kinsella (1928 – 2021) Ireland

Source: Melmoth The Wanderer (Melmoth Reads Poetry * Irish Poets)