Seamus Heaney(b. 1939)
The Skunk
Up, black, striped and damasked like the chasuble6
At a funeral mass, the s k u n k s tail
Paraded the skunk. Night after night
I expected her like a visitor.
The refrigerator whinnied into silence.
My desk light softened beyond the verandah.
Small oranges loomed in the orange tree.
I began to be tense as a voyeur.
After eleven years I was composing
Love-letters again, broaching the word "wife
Like a stored cask, as if its slender vowel
Had mutated into the night earth and air
Of California. T h e beautiful, useless
Tang of eucalyptus spelt your absence.
The aftermath of a m o u t h f u l of wine
Was like inhaling you off a cold pillow.
And there she was, the intent and glamorous,
Ordinary, mysterious skunk,
Mythologized, demythologized,
Snuffing the boards five feet beyond me.
It all came back to me last night, stirred
By the sootfall of your things at bedtime,
Your head-down, tail-up h u n t in a bottom drawer
For the black plunge-line nightdress.