Poem
Gregory O\'Donoghue
Nocturne
Nocturne
Nocturne
Midnight. Only myself and a white-haired womanhave been set down at a dismantled rural station.
I watch her cross the tracks and fade
up a slope, vanish in a blur of conifers.
Lingering near the solitary building –
abandoned sandstone that tells me to move on,
that here is nowhere, that I’m travelling –
I listen, savouring the night stillness.
It is the aftertraces of flaring spirits
who’ve leapt after diminishing carriages,
it must be these making the quietness quicken.
And I’m numbed a moment at seeming to see
the snow-haired woman returning; it’s only
a chalky cat stealing in a crouch across
the moonlight, unless I am doubly mistaken.
© 2001, The Estate of Gregory O\'Donoghue
From: Making Tracks
Publisher: The Dedalus Press, Dublin
From: Making Tracks
Publisher: The Dedalus Press, Dublin
Poems
Poems of Gregory O\'Donoghue
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Nocturne
Midnight. Only myself and a white-haired womanhave been set down at a dismantled rural station.
I watch her cross the tracks and fade
up a slope, vanish in a blur of conifers.
Lingering near the solitary building –
abandoned sandstone that tells me to move on,
that here is nowhere, that I’m travelling –
I listen, savouring the night stillness.
It is the aftertraces of flaring spirits
who’ve leapt after diminishing carriages,
it must be these making the quietness quicken.
And I’m numbed a moment at seeming to see
the snow-haired woman returning; it’s only
a chalky cat stealing in a crouch across
the moonlight, unless I am doubly mistaken.
From: Making Tracks
Nocturne
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