Unused Water

for Joan McBreen

Lost earrings,

a dash of acrid green

in the wrong time of the year.

How can they have ripened

in the irreflecting night,

they died so thin and hawk-coloured,

like matching clouds, one drying rapidly,

one completely dry.

One letter's opening endearment,

like August's, only gentler,

slips a transparent skin

over the eye just awake

Autumn had left uncored,

as when you put down with the telephone

the whole Atlantic.

-Medbh McGuckian, Captain Lavender (1995)