1.
They won’t grow there my neighbour said
in April – no foreign thing
will ever grow in the soil of Umbria
The Roman tried and we told him –
besides it is too early hereabouts
to think of planting seed-potatoes
And furthermore the moon is growing:
no seed will take
that is not planted in the shrinking moon
2.
At the start of May I pause a moment
in the cool after thunder
to admire their sharp-green stalks
Flourishing beside the vines – I am
thinking of Ireland and trying to return
to a message for my father
Begun when we came face to face
in the Achill house of Heinrich Böll
twelve months ago last March
Begun and lost in moving on from there –
to Dublin Moscow here
carrying these pages round
Repeating conversation with the past –
trying to keep performance bright
like putting sea-light under glass
3.
Until today I find myself at last
beside the corner of the tillage
reading Thomas Kinsella’s anthology
Comforted by these few stalks
and recognising differences – somehow always
exiled stranger to my own
As if I had not served my time
sheltering in the clefts of rocks
on sodden hills where no sun shines
Coughing in foggy mail-boat mornings
labouring on foreign sites
and flying home at every chance
Enough to be here now and trying to write
a message for my wandering father
in whatever language fits –
Fits this and fits the journeying itself:
the starving freight of coffin-ships
and the wasting death of Goll Mac Morna