The Bell Ringer
He came among us first at Christmas
when, as a young boy , I heard him climb
the creaking stairs to ring the heavy bell.
His back bent low beneath the knotted rope,
he would ring out forever
over the stubble fields,
across numberless townlands,
to the tiny houses flickering in moon-thickets
against the northern sky.
He rang loud,
he rang long,
almost forever so I thought,
and then in the silence he was gone,
lost in the crowded lamp-lit Church,
in the dying embers of the lingering bell.
And I would listen to the silence he had made,
for he and the wind and the bell were one.
Sometimes the wind would blow the sound
across the land, and it was heard loud
where it was never heard at all.
He and the bell were one, bound
together by the knotted rope
he held in his worn hands.
The rope would wrench his arms and chest,
his head bent low beneath his work,
he belonged to the bell,
and the bell belonged to the wind,
and he and the wind and the bell were one,
bound together by the knotted rope
that did not sing but spoke
of his pain in the dumb silence
that swung across the air
when he had gone,
descending the stair.
And all that I knew was the bell-ringer,
and he and the bell were one.
But this was so long ago,
so long that sometimes I hear
the bell resound within me,
knowing it loud and true
and off by heart
in still days of wonder.
