A Siren
By Derek Mahon
(after Saba)
Anyone watching you in the water would think: ‘A siren!’
Winner in the women’s swimming event, you seem
strange on the screen of my inglorious life.
While you smile in triumph I tie a thread,
a thin unbreakable thing, to your toe
but you stride past without noticing me.
Your friends, young like yourself, crowd round
and make a noise in the bar; and then
just for a moment cloud-shadow, a grave
motherly shadow shivers down from your
eyebrows to the proud, beautiful chin
and joins your rising to my own setting sun.
Copyright Credit: Derek Mahon, "A Siren" from New Collected Poems. Copyright © 2011 by Derek Mahon. Reprinted by permission of The Gallery Press.
Source: Collected Poems (The Gallery Press, 2008)