Poem of the week Swallows by Michael Longley
over 4 years in The Irish Times
for Ethna Viney
Have the swallows returned, Ethna, to your woodshed, Their Thallabaun address, Your household’s annex?
Your hospitality Every year makes room For Saharan travellers And for me from Belfast.
I sit at your table While swallows fed their young Penetrating darkness Through the narrowest gap.
You who are ninety now Have the swallow’s genius To find above a door Soul-space, an inch of it.
Michael Longley’s most recent and 12th collection is The Candlelight Maker (Cape Poetry)
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