April dusk
It is tragic to be a poet now
And not a lover
Paradised under the mutest bough.

I look through my window and see
The ghost of life flitting bat-winged.
O I am as old as a sage can even be,
O I am as lonely as the first fool kinged.

The horse in his stall turns away
From the hay-filled manger, dreaming of grass
Soft and cool in hollows. Does he neigh
Jealousy-words for John MacGuigan's ass
That never was civilised in stall or trace.

An unmusical ploughboy whistles down the lane
Not worried at all about the fate of Europe.
While I sit here feeling the subtle pain
Of one whose Tree of God has been uprooted.

Patrick Kavanagh
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