AN OLD SONG REWRITTEN

Five days I lay dead
In the wild hills
Over Valley Desmond,
My clay mixed in their clay,
My bones grown
Into the grey rocks among the heather.

And yet I dreamed,
For when you came that way
I saw you with my eyes
As if they were the earth
And you the skies,
As if they were the sea
And you the light;
I saw you with my eyes,
And nothing else was there,
And neither sound nor fragrance in that
And in me not a sense
But sight,
No stir
But the stir of delight
That welled to the eyes
As if two mountain springs
From the grave mountain's trance
Poured through me into light.

Five days I lay dead,
And five times I knew you
Away on the hills.
One day in the silence
I saw you go by me;
One day in the darkness
Your voice echoed through me
In darkness and silence
My hands were set free
To feel your young body
From the neck to the knee.
Once in death
I smelt vour breath,
Once in the grave
I tasted your mouth—
And oh, I was wakeful
Those nights for your beauty
When my bones were the rocks
And my body the fields!

FRANK O'CONNOR

Source: Irish Statesman, Vol. 9, No. 4, Oct. 1 1927, p. 81