Moya Pacey: Two Poems

Larkman

All the fledgling lark knows is the dark

wooden box nailed shut but for two flaps.

Open they let in the light.

All the larkman knows is a metal cage

lowering into the pit. Coal dust trapped

in his throat and the shaft smothering

warm. Sundays at dawn, he carries the box

up Skircoat Moor and slides back the flaps.

The lark opens its throat and the unboxed

song soars on and on …

In chapel that night, the larkman snug

in his wooden pew sings, ‘Safe evermore

under God’s wings.’ The lark’s song

boxed, folded, tight. The absence of light.

In the Halifax area of Yorkshire before the First World War larks would be captured and trained to sing by enthusiasts known as larkmen.

-William Orcutt Cushing 1823–1901: “Under his wings I am safely abiding”.

Rahroon Westmeath

They woke, dressed, and climbed down the ladder from the loft. The man cut thick slices of bread from the loaf and they used them to scoop up the eggs and rashers and ate straight from the frypan. They stepped out of the kitchen door into the dark-before-dawn light. The man carrying the lantern, and his turf cutter, led the way across the red bog. He could have crossed it with his eyes shut. The boy followed trusting in his path, wheeling the barrow over the spongy ground.

The man climbed down into the trench, using the iron ladder, and began to nick and cut and slice the turf. He tossed each slab up to the boy, spade ready to lift each one into the barrow. When it was full, the boy wheeled it back to the house. While they worked, the man entertained the boy with his mimicry. He took off a neighbour, well gone with the drink, after a session in Brady’s Bar and Fr O’Hara giving out in the pulpit about them all being rotten sinners deserving what was coming to them if they didn’t pull their socks up and start living good catholic lives.

The sun rose higher and the boy lost track of the barrow-loads he’d ferried. He got to thinking that his task was the harder one and asked the man to swap places. Without another word, the man climbed up the iron ladder and took the boy’s place at the barrow. The boy climbed down and picked up the turf cutter. He nicked and cut and sliced the way he’d seen the man do and used all his strength but could only manage to toss three slabs up out of the deep trench.

The man said nothing to the boy but climbed down into the trench and took up where he’d left off with the cutting and the stories and the mimicry. The boy resumed his barrowing until the late afternoon meal of strong sugary tea and slices of white bread thickly spread with blackberry jam.

the old man recalls

that day the sweetness

in everything

Moya Pacey