Sanctity

To be a poet and not know the trade,
To be a lover and repel all women;
Twin ironies by which great saints are made,
The agonizing pincer-jaws of Heaven.


I Had A Future

O I had a future
A future.
Gods of the imagination bring back to life
The personality of those streets,
Not any streets
But the streets of nineteen-forty.

Give the quarter-seeing eyes I looked out of
The animal-remembering mind
The fog through which I walked towards
   The mirage
That was my future.

The women I was to meet
They were nowhere within sight.

And then the pathos of the bloind soul,
How without knowing stands in its own
   kingdom.
Bring me a small detail
How I felt about money,
Not frantic aslater,
There was the future.

Show me the stretcher-bed I slept on
In a room in Drumcondra Road,
Let John Betjeman call for me in a car.

It is summer and the eerie beat
Of madness in Europe trembles the
Wings of the butterflies along the canal.

O I had a future.

--- Patrick Kavanagh