THE EVE OF M
Y SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY
I Walked in the midnight gloom
Over the causeway to the light house
Through the sea fog drifting like vapour .
Clinging over the swaying tide.
Above and to the west
Cygnus is poised ;
To dive with ferocity into the sea
Over the Aran Islands
Poised like thesoaring gannet;
The red and green lights in the bay
Flickering ; by turn about
And the gurgle of the water
In the causeway breakwater
Bleow me in the rocks
Made me think that
The course all our lives
Run with the tide and
The harbour lights of
Red and green
Blinking , balefully in the night .
and the water swelling
Ebbing - Gurgling ;
In the water
Above the fog .
And with the gurgling water in the rocks
As the tide drifts in and out ;
I think
Of infants , slithering into life
From the balmy calmness of the womb
Buffered ,comforted , comfitted calm
And of a sudden like a seal ;
It breaks through its first fog
Their world opened
With a blinding myriad of suddenness
And I know that just as surely,
Elsewhere along another corridor
A monitor crawls across a screen ,
More crookedly each time
Scribbles its last signature
Diagonally in descending green
Till it dwindles and fizzles out
And red and green lights flicker;
Blink in boisterous protest
Alarms alert the ministering staff
Who move to mollify the machines
As that final fog descends
May all our infants be welcomed in swathes of green
And may gentleness be theirs
Theirs to give theirs to share
Gentleness .
When the final curtain falls , at last
In the theatre of our lives
And as the players depart the stage
I pray that all your loved ones pass in dreamlike trance
Into their last fog
In soothing peace
And may its comrade Tranquility
Be theirs in their passage
Through that long Night.
May we live and be guided by the harbour lights
May we recognise the perilous rocks
May we have the lighthouse before us as we come to port
May the wind of wisdom
Vanquish the storms of anguish
May we take the tide
When the moon swelled and made it full
To clear the shale ;
And as we set sail
May the lights of green and red
And the brighter light of wisdom
Always prevail
May grace and some goodness
Be at our side.
As we pass the causeway by
Gurgling always gently in the night
Let us try
To always keep alight
In the stern a Tilly lamp
So the next who pass this course
Will sail in safety all their ways.
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