A thing that was hard for you

I don't know
at what point
the intercourse
and whispers
of confession
talked the pillow down

and turned it
easily
and conveniently
into the sacrament
of reconciliation
with its push and pull
higher than the tides
of Fundy

but there it is
and so I am
like the guest
at Joyce's dinner party
in The Dead
who reports
the regret
of a woman
in "Broken Vows"
whose man
promised her
and said a lie to her
and who had taken east and west from her
and taken what is before her and behind her
when her mother told her not to be talking with him
too late

and though late
like all regrets
this lament was fresh

in spite of being added
by Huston
to Joyce
who never had it
in Dubliners
and even when Huston
added it
it was hardly new
having been Englished

from then hundred year old Irish

by Lady Augusta Gregory

who counted Yeats her man

and bore him

in mind

when she rendered

"Donal Og"
to protest his love
the way all love is eventually protested
even if not renounced
or the reasons well founded

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;

the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday
and myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother has said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!