Uploaded on June 20, 2011
I dwell in this leaky western castle.
American matrons weave across the carpet,
Sorefooted as camels, and less useful.
Smooth Ionic columns hold up a roof,
A chandelier shines on a foxhound’s coat:
The grandson of a grandmother I reared.
In the old days I read or embroidered,
But now it is enough to see the sky change,
Clouds extend or smother a mountains’ shape.
Wet afternoons I ride in the Rolls;
Windshield wipers flail helpless against the rain:
I thrash through pools like smashing panes of glass.
And the light afterwards! Hedges steam,
I ride through a damp tunnel of sweetness,
The bonnet strewn with bridal hawthorn
From which a silver lady leaps, always young,
Alone, I hum with satisfaction in the sun,
An old bitch, with a warm mouthful of game.
—John Montague,
Ireland in Poetry, edited by Charles Sullivan
6.20.23: I do not like this old bitch, especially now, not long after rereading Away by Jane Urquhart, which deals, in part, with the Irish Potato Famine, when poor farmers in their native land were starved out by land-grabbing English “nobility” (what a misnomer) like the ones from whom this old dowager got the that Rolls-Royce and the servant to drive it.