A Small Farm

A Small Farm

All the perversions of the soul
I learnt on a small farm.
How to do the Neighbours harm
by magic, how to hate.
I was abandoned to their tragedies,
minor but unhealing:
bitterness over boggy land,
casual stealing of crops,
venomous cardgames
across swearing tables,
a little music on the road,
a little peace in decrepit stables.
Here were rosarybeads,
a bleeding face,
the glinting doors
that did encase
their cutler needs,
their plates, their knives,
the cracked calendars
of their lives.
I was abandoned to their tragedies
and began to count the birds,
to deduct secrets in the kitchen cold
and to avoid among my nameless weeds
the civil war of that household.
Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide

Just when you think the weather has hunkered in and become all grey and mizzly a humdinger of a day dawns - almost T shirt weather! I had to do a few jobs in Bantry then came home the long but very picturesque way. Yes that is the road :/ and it wends it's way up from the Goat's Path steeply, windingly and rather bumpily a, and takes you in a spectacular route over the mountain. Some surprisingly posh houses and then this little one is the last point of civilisation before the bog. An intriguing, traditional farmhouse house - possibly still inhabited, but no mod cons whatsoever. It fits so snugly and sympathetically into its surroundings, happier, I feel, than the one in the poem.

Back home and I tackled some of the duckweed and parrot grass which is consuming the pond. I couldn't get too messy as Mags shortly arrived to sort out the hair. Very civilised to have the hairdresser come to you - we ate mince pies whilst waiting for things to do.