I would like to live in the West, at the edge
of the world, on a small holding,
walk my cow each day to the milk shed
and see which hen I am beholding to
for laying an egg. I would change
wheat into loaves, fill my plate from the field,
stack turf like gold bars for the kitchen range,
and conceal my distillery in creels.
Instead, I have stood at the town’s crossroads
and listened to who is ‘Wanted’ across the border,
who is being adulterous on the old bog roads
and who sprayed ‘Ireland is out of order!’
