The Hunterian

summer evening
(for David Donaldson)

the way we’d go, children of the land,
out of the city, on a high summer’s
evening, so that we could draw clean
breath, there between the haycocks,
where we carried so many memories
of hay bundles bending out young backs

in this scene, where light spreads
like a silken veil across the terrain, a
taste of sun permeates your thoughts
about those days, drawing all pains out
of the story, nothing seen but the sway
of growth and gather, and that old cart

the stooks, in their pale rows, are straight,
proud, and ready (so some say) for a
reel without motion, to a faint tune (perhaps)
from benign breezes, on the long green floor –
in the shelter of trees, those ghosts remain
unseen, utterly content, in their own stalls

Aonghas MacNeacail