In Deference To Heaney

In Deference to Heaney

August’s light shrinks faster now

We have to settle for the night

We commit to memory, getting older,

Your purity of thought that was our light

You, camera obscura, your

Dry stone-walls and gritty Mossbawn clay

Showed beauty in the weave of things

Even sorrow’s cutting edge could have its way

You’ve slipped that inconvenient shroud

We liked to think we knew

The suit-clad stance, honest smile

Those resonant, blaming tones, of You.

You’ve transcended that axiom - out there in the dew

While we mortals only murmur, wait and hope it’s true

We are without; and must take the savage cost

For us, there is no beauty now we’ve lost

Your perfect, angled, prism of a mind

That conveyed a light of beauty to the blind

2013 © Gerry Tully