Noon at St. Michael's

Nurses and nuns —

their sails whiter than those

of the yachts in the bay, they come and go

on winged feet, most of them, or in sensible shoes.

July, and I should be climbing among stones

or diving, but for broken bones,

from the rocks below.

I try to read

a new novel set aside;

but a sword-swift pain

in the left shoulderblade, the result

of a tumble in Sheridan Square, makes reading difficult:

writing you can do in your head.

It starts to rain

on the sea,

suddenly dark, the pier,

the gardens and the church spires of Dun Laoghaire.

You would think it was suddenly October

as smoke flaps, the yachts tack violently

and those caught in the downpour

run for cover.

But in a few

minutes the sun shines again,

the leaves and hedges glisten as if with dew

in that fragrant freshness after rain

when the world seems made anew

before confusion, before pain;

and I think of you,

a funny-face

but solemn, with the sharpest mind I know,

a thoughtful creature of unconscious grace

bent to your books in the sun or driving down

to New York for an evening on the town.

Doors open wherever you go

in that furious place;

for you are the light

rising on lost islands, the spéir-bhean

the old poets saw gleam in the morning mist.

When you walk down Fifth Avenue in your lavender suit,

your pony eyes opaque, I am the one

beside you, and life is bright

with the finest and best.

And I have seen,

as you have not, such is your modesty,

men turn to watch your tangle of golden hair,

your graceful carriage and unhurried air

as if you belonged to history

of ‘her story’, that mystery.

You might have been

a saint or a great

courtesan, anachronistic now

in some ways, in some ways more up-to-date

than the most advanced of those we know.

While you sit on your sun-porch in Connecticut

re-reading Yeats in a feminist light

I am there with you.

Source: New Collected Poems (The Gallery Press, 2011)