The Singer's House
When they said Carrickfergus I could hear
the frosty echo of saltminers' picks.
I imagined it, chambered and glinting,
a township built of light.
What do we say any more
to conjure the salt of our earth?
So much comes and is gone
that should be crystal and kept,
and amicable weathers
that bring up the grain of things,
their tang of season and store,
are all the packing we'll get.
So I say to myself Gweebarra
and its music hits off the place
like water hitting off granite.
I see the glittering sound
framed in your windows,
knives and forks set on oilcloth,
and the seals' heads, suddenly outlined,
scanning everything.
People here used to believe
that drowned souls lived in the seals.
At spring tides they might change shape.
They loved music and swam in for a singer
who might stand at the end of summer
in the mouth of a whitewashed turf-shed,
his shoulder to the jamb, his song
a rowboat far out in evening.
When I came here first you were always singing,
a hint of the clip of the pick
in your winnowing climb and attack.
Raise it again, man. We still believe what we hear.
