"HANDS," Poem by Michael Hartnett

 

This has long been on my wall and everytime I glance up an see it on my bulliton board I recite it to my self. 

 

"Some white academy of grace

Taught her to dance in perfect ways:

Neck , locked as lilly, is not wan

On this great, undulating bird.

 

Are they indeed your soul, those,

As frantic as lace in a wind,

Forever unable to fly

Frome the beauty of you body?

 

Andif they dance, your five white fawns,

Walking lawns of your spoken word,

What may I do but linger

My eyes on each luminous bone?

 

Your hands are musci, and phrases

Escape ypur fingers as they move,

And make the unmappable lands

Quiet orchestra of your limbs. 

For I have seen your hands in fields, 

And I called them flutted flowers

Such as the lily is, before

It unleashes its starwhite life:

I have seen your fingernail

Cut the sky

And called it the new moon.

 

Her iron beats

the smell of bread

from damp linen:

silver, crystal

and warm white things.

Whatever bird

I used to be,

hawk or lapwing, tern, or something fierce and shy--

these birds are dead.

I come here

on tired wings.

Odours of bread...