Persephone by Michael Longley

 Perspehone by Michael Longley

I see as through a skylight in my brain
The mowl strew its buildings in the rain,

The swallows turn above their broken homes
And all my acres in delirium.

Straitjacketed by cold and numbskulled
Now sleep the well adjusted and the skilled-

The bat folds its wings like a winter leaf,
The squirrel in its hollow holds aloof.

The weasel and ferret, the stoat and fox
Move hand in glove across the equinox.

I can tell how softly their footsteps go-
Their footsteps borrow silence from snow.

Heart My Lovely Hobo by Sandro Cisernos

Heart, my lovely hobo, you

remember, then, that afternoon in Venice

when all the pigeons rose flooding the piazaa

like a vaulted celing. That was you

and you alone who grinned.

Fat as an oyster,

pulpy as a plum,

raw, exposed, naieve,

dumb. As if love 

could be curbed, and grace

could save you from daily beatings.

Those blue jewels of flowers in the arbor

that the bees loved. Oh, there'll be other 

flowers, a cat maybe beside the bougainvillea,

a little boat with flags glittering in the harbour

to make you laugh,

to make you spiral ince more.

Not this throbbing.

This.

----

July Evening by Norman Mac Caig

A bird's voice chinks and tinkles
Alone in the gaunt reedbed-
            Tiny silversmith
Working late in the evening.

I sit and listen. The rooftop
With a quill of smoke stuck in it
            Wavers against the sky
In the dreamy heat of summer.

Flowers' closing time: bee lurches
Across the hayfield, singing
            And feeling its drunken way
Round the air's invisible corners.

And grass is grace. And charlock
Is gold of its own bounty.
            The broken chair by the wall
is one with immortal landscapes.

Something has been completed
That everything is part of,
            Something that will go on
Being completed forever.