Shane O’neill’s Cairn

TO U. J. When you and I on the Palos Verdes cliff Found life more desperate than dear, And when we hawked at it on the lake by Seattle, In the west of the world, where hardly Anything has died yet: we'd not have been sorry, Una, But surprised, to foresee this gray Coast in our days, the gray waters of the Moyle Below us, and under our feet The heavy black stones of the cairn of the lord of Ulster. A man of blood who died bloodily Four centuries ago: but death's nothing, and life, From a high death-mark on a headland Of this dim island of burials, is nothing either. How beautiful are both these nothings.