Look out: here comes a poem

It’s almost funny to see how the readership of this blog plummets at the mere mention of poetry. Almost. Nevertheless, I shall continue from time to time to put poems in it.

At the risk of exposing an unexpectedly sentimental streak in my character (my excuse is that this was written 20 something years ago) here is an all-too-autobiographical poem. ‘Clones’ by the way is a small town near Monaghan in Ireland, and is pronounced ‘Cloe-ness’.

 

Darkness

Had it been as light as that – as light as when we three
drank whiskey in a Clones pub, and you two huddled, moved
your web of warmth to fold me in your common, unchanged love,
had it been as light as that, you’d still lie here with me.

But how to still the sudden thrill when, through the sleeping house,
− back door, staircase, purple room – a trail of tiny creaks
betrays your shyly seeking feet, your shadowed shape, that wakes
my two-years drugged and deadened heart? Oh, I might touch your face

as gentle as the scarf you wore to keep you from the night,
but you lay in my arms, my dear – my demon dragged you down
where sick and savage hearts can swim, but innocence will drown −
you could not lift my leaden heart to love as light as that.

Simon Darragh, Monaghan, 198?.