Mo Mhíle Stór

^{translated from the Irish by Seamus Heaney}

I was under your spell from the start:
I was young, I was soft,
and you well knew you could turn my head
with your talk about whitewashed courts
and big long sleeps on a duck-down bed
and gloves made out of the skins of fish.

When you sailed away
my goodbyes were the gulls in your wake.
I put up with rows and with blame
from every side; there was a time
when I could number my friends
on the fingers of one hand.

You sailed through life, you came back home,
your boat beached on my bed.
As I covered you all in honey,
I saw your hair had gone grey
and straight;
but in my memory the curls grew on,
twelve coils in the ripening
crop on your head.