VIGIL In my town the old sea-captain Whose skin was sailcloth, whose speech Was a gusty spittle, whose lies Were crimson anemones that swayed In the blue rockpools around The green edge of my town -- In my town the captain was last >From his wrecked ship in a roaring November storm -- the breeches-buoy Lifting him like a saint Assumed into heaven over The rocks and breakers, up the cliff To the room with dim prints of ships In full sail, where his pipe Wheezed while he told me great lies. In my town, at the rosary The night they coffined him, He was only another Wheyfaced pensioner Already gone straight to heaven With the reek of Murray's Plug Tobacco for a halo. This was the first I'd seen Of him with his weather eye closed. -- Vigil, from Requiem, James J. McAuley, b. Dublin 1936