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PN Review 275
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This poem is taken from PN Review 197, Volume 37 Number 3, January - February 2011.

Mainly of Women John F. Deane
Great Northern Diver
Sometimes the sea, surging
through its seasonal gradations, comes
 
crashing in across the rocks and pier beyond Rusheen;
on Croaghaun the corrie brims,

dark water spilling over, gathering
a rust-brown iron and coursing down to ocean.

She who stands, each day, near dawn
to watch the morning bus out of Dooagh

leave for fresh-turned fields, stares vacantly out
over Atlantic waves that flick, sometimes, a small spittle

against her face. She heard, last night,
the great northern diver far out, in the dark, offshore,

its long and withering cries, and she knows –
after the head-light beams of the bus have passed

on over the road and up the hill –
the rooster (cockerel, chanticleer, and cock-a-doodle-doo)
...


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