SELKIE -- by Robin Robertson
in memory of Michael Donaghy
'I'm not stopping,'
he said, shrugging off his skin
like a wet-suit, then stretching it
on the bodhran's frame,
'let's play.'
And he played till dawn:
all the jigs and reels
he knew, before he stood
and drained the last
from his glass, slipped back in
to the seal-skin,
into a new day, saluting us
with that famous grin:
'That's me away.'
A SEAGULL MURMUR -- by Robin Robertson
is what they called it,
shaking their heads
like trawler men;
the mewling sound of a leaking heart
the sound
of a gull trapped in his chest.
To let it out
they ran a cut down his belly
like a fish, his open ribs
the ribs of a boat;
and they closed him,
wired him shut.
Caulked and sea-worthy now
with his new valve; it's metal
tapping away:
the dull clink
of a signal-buoy
or the beak at the bars of a cage.
