Poem of the Week: “A Half-finished Garden” by Brendan Kennelly

A Half-finished Garden

Because her days were making a garden
She haunted that particular beach
Drawing rocks, sticks, shells and stones,
Random-pitched sea-gifts, over the years,
Bog-oak, sculpted and twisted,
She lugged from the beach up to the garden
That was half-finished when she had to leave it
To go to a place of which I know nothing.

Here is the picture (I have nothing but pictures),
The sea helpless to govern its giving
Through rumble and slither, bang, roar and hiss,
A house on a cliff-top with staring blue windows
And, work of the dead to pleasure the living,
A half-finished garden, epitaph, promise.

– Brendan Kennelly, from The Essential Brendan Kennelly (2011)

Baily Lighthouse, Howth Head, Dublin