KINSALE The kind of rain we knew is a thing of the past -- deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say, browsing on spire and bogland; but today our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun, our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay like race-horses. We contemplate at last shining windows, a future forbidden to no-one. -- Derek Mahon (born Belfast 1941) SOLES "I caught four soles this morning," said the man with the beard; cloud shifted and a sun- shaft pierced the sea. Fisher of soles, did you reflect the water you walked on contains so very many souls, the living and the dead, you could never begin to count them? Somewhere a god waits rod in hand, to add you to their number. -- Derek Mahon (b. 1941, Belfast) .