For Sarah Selzer
The arithmetic suggests you might have been
conceived on the night ferry to Dublin.
That, with a drive across the republic
in August, and a week of spuds and Guinness,
of Sweet Afton’s and of Passing Clouds,
of fuchsias, escaped from some gentry’s garden,
purpling wild and red down narrow lanes
where family men fought a ragged war,
rocks at Hell’s Mouth, white and bleached as bones,
the lullaby lapping of Bantry Bay,
KEEPING THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING
'CROSSING THE BROOK': J.M.W. TURNER
THE OLD RAPTURES
THE OLD RAPTURES
THE OCCASIONAL JUBILEE