(Lines for the lady medic)

 

You`ll laugh and say, `That poets in a plight`

That, `He`ll remember nothing` or maybe fret,

That `being three-parts tipsy on the night

the things he said were anyway all lies`

 

But, love, could I forget,

How the laughter, capering with the light,

Danced wild Antrim-antics in your eyes?

Or that your voice had in it, when you talked,

The sound of the west wind waking an Irish dawn

(Full of quiet lilt) And, Kathy – when you walked –

How you queened it, to the manner born.

 

You mourned some complicated love affair

And as you spoke it seemed the music died,

And all the choristers of the upper-air

Fled to some far corner of heaven and cried

 

(But none of this, nor your unlikely trade,

Lent the poet`s power to my pen.

But–when you`d gone–the way your memory made

The affection come in the voices of the men.)