April Dusk

    April dusk

    It is tragic to be a poet now

    And not a lover

    Paradised under the mutest bough.

    I look through my window and see

    The ghost of life flitting bat-winged.

    O I am as old as a sage can even be,

    O I am as lonely as the first fool kinged.

    The horse in his stall turns away

    From the hay-filled manger, dreaming of grass

    Soft and cool in hollows. Does he neigh

    Jealousy-words for John MacGuigan's ass

    That never was civilised in stall or trace.

    An unmusical ploughboy whistles down the lane

    Not worried at all about the fate of Europe.

    While I sit here feeling the subtle pain

    Of one whose Tree of God has been uprooted.