A woman with no face walked into the light;
A boy, in a brown tree-norfolk suit,
Holding on
Without hands
To her seeming skirt.

She stopped, 
And he stopped, 
And I, in terror, stopped, staring.

Then I saw a group of shadowy figures behind her.

It was a wild wet morning 
But the little world was spinning on.

Liplessly, somehow, she addressed it: 
The book must be opened 
And the park too.

I might have tittered
But my teeth chattered
And I saw that the words, as they fell,
Lay, wriggling, on the ground.

There was a stir of wet wind
And the shadowy figures began to stir
When one I had thought dead
Filmed slowly out of his great effigy on a tomb near by
And they all shuddered
He bent as if to speak to the woman

But the nursery governor flew up out of the well
                 of Saint Patrick, 
Confiscated by his mistress,
And, his head bent,
Staring out over his spectacles,
And scratching the gravel furiously,
Hissed -
                  The words, went pingg! like bullets,
                  Upwards past his spectacles -
Say nothing, I say, say nothing, say nothing!
And he who had seemed to be coming to life
Gasped,
Began hysterically, to laugh and cry,
And, with a gesture of impotent and half-petulant despair,
Filmed back into his effigy again.

High above the Bank of Ireland
Unearthly music sounded,
Passing westwards.

Then, from the drains,
Small sewage rats slid out.
They numbered hundreds of hundreds, tens, thousands.
Each bowed obsequiously to the shadowy figures
Then turned and joined in a stomach dance with his brothers
                  and sisters.
Being a multitude, they danced irregularly.
There was rat laughter,
Deeper here and there,
And occasionally she-rat cries grew hysterical.
The shadowy figures looked on, agonized.
The woman with no face gave a cry and collapsed.
The rats danced on her
And on the wriggling words
Smirking.

The nursery governor flew back into the well
With the little figure without hands in the brown-tree clothes.
 
 
 

Moments Musicaux
 

       Je suis belle, ô mortels!

I

You thought she had left you alone, 
She of the Second Gift, 
Save for belief in her.

You thought she had left you alone 
When, the struggle at end, 
The god went, silent, away 
Through the flames that leaped and sang.

You thought she had left you alone 
When, his piping over, 
The shepherd waited 
The silence that waited his silence.

You thought she had left you alone, 
Though believing her there and there, 
As there, so nearly, 
When soft light transfigured the estuary 
And, with pain stilled, 
Heart and heart seemed at one.

But you knew her there,
And forever,
When the spirit she sent you to seek,
The spirit she sent to seek you,
Across half a world, 
Across half a lifetime, 
Smiled identity; 
When, there, by the sea, 
But out of the sea, 
In quiet after unease, 
Movement, too long sustained, 
Ceased 
And, blessedly, 
Line found its direction.

II

You thought she had left you alone. 
You had wondered, to music, 
How they could have the heart, 
They that were all heart, 
How they could have the heart 
To stay 
With you gone. 
They, tender as potent, 
They, potent as tender, 
Revealing to eyes 
What eyes scarce could perceive, 
Opening to ears 
What ears scarce could hear 
And to heart 
What heart scarce could hold, 
How could they have the heart 
To stay 
With you gone?
 

III

You thought she had left you alone. 
Now, knowing they stay, 
You knowing you go, 
You know, too, 
That, going,
You go not alone,
Nor without them.

Divided by half of a world, 
Sundered by half of a lifetime, 
Yet you are bound; 
And together, you take them to her, 
While, together, you leave them 
To others,
Of hers. 
 

1961