THE YOUNG NUNS
(Alex Comfort)

All night I've heard the sea on Bunduff strand
like a cross child, or a dog shut out by a door.
Today the weed is piled, the children will find
the sky full of the last chips of the storm:
then from their holy hive upon the dunes
come out the gentle piebald nuns.

Every good morning I have seen them
never alone - drifting in grazing knots
over the sand, with Friesians of their own colour
or in full sail along the coastguards' road
planted on earth as though a gale fills them,
each one a walking miracle:
and out of each like a drizzle from a cloud
falls constantly the honeyless buzz of prayer

Their plumage, saint-designed to make them seem
elderly shadows of a living girl,
once plucked, like shag no more than skin and bone -
yet frames in each the sweet face of a doll,
in every mound of clothes a living girl.

I pass them walking. They in Irish voices
gravely with bowed heads take my greeting,
look kindly but not long
in case a man's eyes should pull out their souls
to dance like tinkers at the road's edge,
to dance like tinkers but in less attire.

But I know better than dance with another man's girl,
God is their lover, so I wish him well
and may he treat them as he should.
For that would be the meanest trick of truth
to find in age, for all that has been given
the solitary coffin-bed of Heaven
less tender than the dangerous beds of Earth.