IN CARROWDORE CHURCHYARD (at the grave of poet Louis MacNeice) Your ashes will not stir, even on this high ground, However the wind tugs, the headstones shake. This plot is consecrated, for your sake, To what lies in the future tense. You lie Past tension now, and spring is coming round Igniting flowers on the peninsula. Your ashes will not fly, however the rough winds burst Through the wild brambles and the reticent trees. All we may ask of you we have; the rest Is not for publication, will not be heard. Maguire, I believe, suggested a blackbird And over your grave a phrase from Euripides. Which suits you down to the ground, like this churchyard With its play of shadow, its humane perspective. Locked in the winter's fist, these hills are hard As nails, yet soft and feminine in their turn When fingers open and the hedges burn. This, you implied, is how we ought to live -- The ironical, loving crush of roses against snow, Each fragile, solving ambiguity. So >From the pneumonia of the ditch, from the ague Of the blind poet and the bombed-out town you bring The all-clear to the empty holes of spring, Rinsing the choked mud, keeping the colours new. -- Derek Mahon, born Belfast 1941. Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast in 1907.