Deep Ulster

It was there, the elemental center,   

All the time. Eternally present, repeating itself   

Like seasons, where the times and dates   

For swallows and household fires are written down,   

The grouse are counted, the quotas of stocked rainbows.   

All that love of order, for its own sake.   

Only the hill-farms, and the high sheep country   

Above politics—the enormous relief   

Up there, as the dialect names of skies   

Return, along with their clouds, and the old knowledge   

Opens the mind again. To dream, to just potter   

In the yard, to fiddle with local stations   

In the kitchen, where news that is no news   

Finally, at last, fills up the years   

With pure existence. Lit from beneath   

The fields are evenings long, the tree by the house   

Where Vladimir and Estragon kept vigil   

With the stillness of commando and insurgent   

Frightens no one. Slow through the air   

A heron, shouldering aside the weight of the world,   

Is making for its colonies, coevals   

In a state plantation . . .   

                                  Nowhere but here   

In the high right hand of Ireland, do the weather fronts   

Give way so slowly, to such ambivalent light.