God the FatherAuthor(s): Richard RyanSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 40-41Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25477202 .

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Richard Ryan

God the Father

I will not travel tonight. Towards dawn a star

In Andromeda will abruptly

Die but the world And his wife, shrouded in snow

Where they live, will see

Nothing of it and instead

Marvel through glass at a slow

Lace of snow slipping

Down the limbs of trees only Or, if that bores them, Number as they drift

Towards sleep the thin

Skins of heat like leaves

Slipping from little hands

And little feet, feeling Their houses with leaves

And snow filling, the rooms

Softly into dark drifts

Tilting, will take at dawn

Such comfort as they need

From the high spars Of trees returning safely Home on a grey tide and,

Under the trees, a few

Calm stars straying down

Over the rim of the world

Of the living where each brain

In this pit stirs again For me only, a planet

40

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GOD THE FATHER

Recollects its purpose And abroad I go once more,

Savouring my choices

As there and there life

Whistles from a clutch of thorn,

Spawns bone in the humming ponds.

41

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