Poem
Nick Laird
THE PRESENT WRITER
THE PRESENT WRITER
THE PRESENT WRITER
A kitchen moon. The ocean night.By the sink the purest thing
that I can think is sitting:
like the ghost of a lighthouse
in Atlantic mist,
a full glass of skimmed milk.
*
The wind outside is tugging
at the rigging of clematis
and the filled mast of the apple tree.
We are in bed, two by two,
and side by side as animals.
Bowsprit. Topcastle.
*
Love, I’d turn for you clean-living,
relinquish drinking, fighting, singing.
The ghost can only long in man.
You were asleep but talking.
Which way to the good?
At the next wet, we sail forth.
© 2007, Nick Laird
From: On Purpose
Publisher: Faber and Faber, London, UK
From: On Purpose
Publisher: Faber and Faber, London, UK
Nick Laird
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1975)
Nick Laird is one of a new generation of poets – including Leontia Flynn, Alan Gillis, Sineád Morrissey, and others – who are redefining Northern Irish poetry for the post-Troubles era, while drawing on a raft of influences including Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, Michael Donaghy, Louis MacNeice and others.
Laird's poems are elegant, economical, concerned with language and form, and utterly unse...
Laird's poems are elegant, economical, concerned with language and form, and utterly unse...
Poems
Poems of Nick Laird
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THE PRESENT WRITER
A kitchen moon. The ocean night.By the sink the purest thing
that I can think is sitting:
like the ghost of a lighthouse
in Atlantic mist,
a full glass of skimmed milk.
*
The wind outside is tugging
at the rigging of clematis
and the filled mast of the apple tree.
We are in bed, two by two,
and side by side as animals.
Bowsprit. Topcastle.
*
Love, I’d turn for you clean-living,
relinquish drinking, fighting, singing.
The ghost can only long in man.
You were asleep but talking.
Which way to the good?
At the next wet, we sail forth.
From: On Purpose
THE PRESENT WRITER
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