Kerr’s Ass: Kavanagh

We borrowed the loan of Kerr’s big ass

To go to Dundalk with butter,

Brought him home the evening before the market

An exile that night in Mucker.

We heeled up the cart before the door,

We took the harness inside –

The straw-stuffed straddle, the broken breeching

With bits of bull-wire tied;

 

The winkers that had no choke-band,

The collar and the reins…

In Ealing, Broadway, London Town

I name their several names

 

Until a world comes to life –

Morning, the silent bog,

And the God of imagination waking

In a Mucker fog.

 

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems, McGibbon & Kee, 1964