Nothing lives in winter. All movement
Slows, ceases, freezes. Of it nothing is born.
Strange, then, how love was engendered there
And spirits melted together in recognition of
Each other, for sometimes when even so bare
The cold wellspring of clear water flows silently
Through the crisp sun of a still morning's air.

In summer all is movement, colour. All is
Full of the bloom and life that the heat brings.
Strange, then, how love melted away in tears
That leave a drying film that sets the face in
Sadness, for even in such radiance the earth rears,
Cracks, powders into sand blown away too soon,
And the show of flowers in breezes blisters and sears.

New Year's Day

They think scythes now come to bite in paddy fields,
Steel serpents that curve under the thick moonlight:
So now, inside the suburban community hall
It is the Associationšs New Year, just like old times-
Mothers scrape the curry from countless plastic tubs
And distribute foil packets in usual army rations,
Nervous, new families attempt some French cricket
In the afternoon autumn-littered field outside,
Men strutting drunk and slapping their acquaintance,
Teenage girls are thrust into an awkward beauty pageant,
Kids get planted in Kandyan saris and are laughed at,
The President speaks, but no-one ever shuts up.
But then suddenly everyone goes quiet, against
The cold southerly breeze getting in under doors,
As it wavers every light on the tended brass lamp.
They look into them, but see its flames stand straight,
Sentinel and reaching and falling, the pool of oil
Rising from lamp to wick to embody each flame.
Thoughts of iron snakes and terraces of rice
Rise in them, then burn bright for a moment-
In Carlingford they rarefy, and flutter out in smoke.