A Christmas Childhood
My father played the melodeon
Out side at our gate
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music
Across the wild bogs his melodeon called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.
Outside the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle
A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.
My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.
Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy’s hanging hill
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon – The Three Wise Kings.
An old man passing said:
‘Can’t he make it talk’ –
The melodeon. I hid it in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.
I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife’s big blade –
There was a little one for cutting tobacco.
And I was six Christmases of age.
My father played the melodeon
My mother milked the cows
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary’s blouse
Patrick Kavanagh