RETURN FARE

And so to Ireland on an Easter Tuesday

To a particular place I could not find.

A sleeping man beside me in the boat-train

Sat whistling Liliburlero in his sleep;

Not, I had thought, a possible thing, yet so.

And through a port-hole of the Fishguard boat,

That was the hospital-boat of twelve years back,

Passengered as before with doubt and dying,

I saw the moon through glass, but a waning moon,

Bad luck, self-doubtful, so once more I slept.

And then the engines woke me up by stopping.

The piers of the quay loomed up. So I went up.

The sun shone rainily and jokingly,

And everyone joked at his own expense,

And the priest declared 'nothing but fishing tackle,'

Laughing provokingly. I could not laugh.

And the hard cackling laughter of the men

And the false whinnying laughter of the girls

Grieved me. The telegraph-clerk said, grieving too,

'St Peter, he's two words in the Free State now,

So that's a salmon due.' I paid the fish.

And everyone I asked about the place

Knew the place well, but not its whereabouts,

And the black-shawled peasant woman asked me then,

Wasn't I jaded? And she grieved to me

Of the apple and the expulsion from the garden.

Ireland went by, and went by as I saw her

When last I saw her for the first time

Exactly how I had seen her all the time.

And I found the place near Sligo, not the place,

So back to England on the Easter Thursday.

[From Poems 1929 (1929)]