Irish Channel 
 
1

Suddenly a siren waked me,
Pealing through the ship’s intestines,
Setting every timber creaking—
Dawn above the Irish Channel !
   
Through my porthole frame the morning
Thrust its faint, cold, russet beauty,
And the porthole glass above it
Mirrored bright and tumbling waters.

I leaped up to see the wonder ;
Dawn had broken over England, 
Europe's sleeping-beauty sister,
Ireland, still lay locked in darkness.

Dawn had broken over England,
But a vessel close beside us
Passed lit u with dimming lanterns,
Yellow in the morning brightness.

Oh, that beauty and that silence,
That black ship on russet waters
With her score of yellow lanterns
Dim like golden moons of August ! 

Then your face shone out before me, 
I crept back and hushed my breathing,
Thinking how that face had never
Mixed with commoner daylight dreaming—


Even when the world was falling,
When the heart was rent asunder, 
Coming only in some dewy 
Wakening that was half a slumber. 

All experience draws about me
Nets to trap the dream that haunts me,
Walls to deaden that wild music
That blew then so sweetly, faintly—

Echoing through me in a silence
Broken by the throb of engines
And two ships’ exultant greetings
Over seas half dawn, half darkness.

I was yours for one wild moment,
I was yours and yours forever,
As like drowsy cocks they trembled,
Cleared their throats and crowed sedately.



Source: O'Connor, Frank; Three Old Brothers and Other Poems; 1936;
London; Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd.; pp.21-22