POETS’ WIVES
i.m Seamus
Heaney
Away with the fairies my wife will say
after
we’ve been on a walk or I’m asked,
out of
the blue, what I think of the dress
she’s
spotted, when I’m only vaguely there –
pursuing
the rhythms inside my head
and depriving
her of my attention
as slowly,
mysteriously, the lines
coalesce
into another damn poem.
And if
at times I frustrate her, the fault
must
lie with you whose work first inspired me,
devouring
your books, until each three, four
or
five year interval has mapped my life
from its
teenage days: increments of time
that
once dragged, yet speed exponentially
now
that I see behind me fallow years
of paid
work, bills, responsibility;
thankful
at least for the late revival
of a
gift which – however slight – I know
I betrayed:
a bind your own exemplar,
Yeats,
defined and you surely understood
when,
in ‘An Afterwards’ perhaps only
half-jokingly,
you had Marie plunge you
and
all your kind into the ninth circle
for your
assiduous care of the word.
poem by David Cooke, copyright 2013
David Cooke won an Eric Gregory Award in 1977 and published his first collection,
Brueghel’s Dancers in 1984. His retrospective collection, In the
Distance, was published in 2011 by Night Publishing and a collection of more
recent pieces, Work Horses, was published by Ward Wood Publishing in
2012. His poems, translations and reviews have appeared widely in
journals including Agenda, Ambit, The Bow Wow Shop, The Critical Quarterly,
The Irish Press, The London Magazine, Magma, The North, Orbis,
Other Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, Poetry Salzburg
Review, The Reader, The SHOp and Stand.
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