Irish Poetry by Billy Collins

That morning under a pale hood of sky

I heard the unambiguous scrape of spackling

against the side of our wickered, penitential house.

The day mirled and clabbered

in the thick, stony light,

and the rooks’ feathered narling

astounded the salt waves, the plush coast.

I lugged a bucket past the forked

coercion of a tree, up toward

the pious and nictitating preeminence of a school,

hunkered there in its gully of learning.

Only later, by the galvanized washstand,

while gaunt, phosphorescent heifers

swam beyond the windows,

did the whorled and sparky gib of the indefinite

wobble me into knowledge.

Then, I heard the ghost-clink of milk bottle

on the rough threshold

and understood the meadow-bells

that trembled over a nimbus of ragwort—

the whole afternoon lambent, corrugated, puddle-mad.