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15 February 2017

Seán Hewitt: Evening poem

By SeA¡n hewitt

First the clatter-iron blackbird,
its fanatical shuddering in the magnolia:

dusk; and the garden is re-assembling,
calling its sparrows home,

and what a voice-racket under the aucuba
(doors closing to) and each sparrow

an iron-filing sweeping the field-lines
of the garden. I sit out in the last warmth

and watch it all come to rest:
the light falling, the thrushes settling

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in the sycamores at the far end
of the lawn, how each tree lowers itself

under a new weight, and I hold out
for a while for everything to darken,

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for the birds to stop singing, as though
I am teaching myself again to bear it.

Seán Hewitt won a Northern Writers’ Award in 2016 and is studying for a PhD at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool.

This article appears in the 08 Feb 2017 issue of the New Statesman, The May Doctrine