Poem of the Week: “Windharp” by John Montague

Detail from the cover of an earlier edition of The Rough Field by John Montague

Windharp

for Patrick Collins

The sounds of Ireland,
that restless whispering
you never get away
from, seeping out of
low bushes and grass,
heatherbells and fern,
wrinkling bog pools,
scraping tree branches,
light hunting cloud,
sound hounding sight,
a hand ceaselessly
combing and stroking
the landscape, till
the valley gleams
like the pile upon
a mountain pony’s coat.

—John Montague, originally published in A Slow Dance (1975) and republished most recently in A Spell to Bless the Silence: Selected Poems (2018)