Primroses


Arthur Morrin and Peter Kane
built our house in a patient time,
hoisted blocks, hammered nails,
gouged window spaces out of hostile
stone in the walls of an old stable
while chestnuts fattened on the trees outside
and while snow fell and froze and melted.

Our dray always lurched into this hollow
in the shimmering heat of Summer
when we swayed on top of a load
of hay and waited in fright to fall off.
We had a tractor alright, an old
monster on giant wheels that could have done the job
but my father would rather horse and dray.

Rust and rain have taken the tractor,
the horse is slaughtered, the dray decayed
the motorway buried the lurching hollow
where we perched on the hay in terror.

But primroses which someone
- perhaps the grandmother taken by an epidemic
in the 'Twenties, one of the lost millions -
planted on a bank appear every Spring
and the children still laugh at the good of it.

Padraig O'Morain

If you've any comments on his poem, Padraig O'Morain would be pleased to hear from you.