after the Gaelic of the ‘Carmina Gadelica’
Monday at 6 a.m.
I heard a lamb,
And then, while I sat by,
A snipe’s kid-cry.
I saw the cuckoo, grey as slate
Before I ate.
On Tuesday, late,
A slimy flagstone shone
Where snails had gone,
And the wheatear, like
Ash off a dyke,
Flapped where the old mare’s black
Foal stumbled and turned its back.
I sensed right there,
Right then
a right bad year.
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