In Honour of Derek Mahon (1) - may he rest in peace

Derek Mahon (23 November 1941 – 1 October 2020) an Irish poet, was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.Paul O'Mahony reads A Garage in Co. CorkBY DEREK MAHON Surely you paused at this roadside oasisIn your nomadic youth, and saw the moundOf never-used cement, the curious faces,The soft-drink ads and the uneven groundRainbowed with oily puddles, where a snailHad scrawled its slimy, phosphorescent trail. Like a frontier store-front in an old westernIt might have nothing behind it but thin air,Building materials, fruit boxes, scrap iron,Dust-laden shrubs and coils of rusty wire,A cabbage-white fluttering in the soddenSilence of an untended kitchen garden — Nirvana! But the cracked panes reveal a darkInterior echoing with the cries of children.Here in this quiet corner of Co. CorkA family ate, slept, and watched the rainDance clean and cobalt the exhausted gritSo that the mind shrank from the glare of it. Where did they go? South Boston? Cricklewood?Somebody somewhere thinks of this as home,Remembering the old pumps where they stood,Antique now, squirting juice into a creamLagonda or a dung-caked tractor whileA cloud swam on a cloud-reflecting tile. Surely a whitewashed sun-trap at the backGave way to hens, wild thyme, and the first fewShadowy yards of an overgrown cart track,Tyres in the branches such as Noah knew —Beyond, a swoop of mountain where you heard,Disconsolate in the haze, a single blackbird. Left to itself, the functional will castA death-bed glow of picturesque abandon.The intact antiquities of the recent past,Dropped from the retail catalogues, returnTo the materials that gave rise to themAnd shine with a late sacramental gleam. A god who spent the night here once rewardedNatural courtesy with eternal life —Changing to petrol pumps, that they be sparedFor ever there, an old man and his wife.The virgin who escaped his dark designSanctions the townland from her prickly shrine. We might be anywhere but are in one place only,One of the milestones of earth-residenceUnique in each particular, the thinlyPeopled hinterland serenely tense —Not in the hope of a resplendent futureBut with a sure sense of its intrinsic nature.