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