"The Swing" by Don Paterson

The Swing

The swing was picked up for the boys, 

for the here-and-here-to-stay

and only she knew why it was

I dug so solemnly

I spread the feet two yards apart

and hammered down the pegs

filled up the holes and stamped the dirt

around its skinny legs

I hung the rope up in the air

and fixed the yellow seat

then stood back that I might admire

my handiwork complete

and saw within its frail trapeze

the child that would not come

of what we knew had two more days

before we sent it home

I know that there is nothing here

no venue and no host

but the honest fulcrum of the hour

that engineers our ghost

the bright sweep of its radar-arc

is all the human dream

handing us from dark to dark

like a rope over a stream

But for all the coldness of my creed

for all those I denied

for all the others she had freed

like arrows from her side

for all the child was barely here

and for all that we were over

I could not weigh the ghosts we are

against those we deliver

I gave the empty seat a push

and nothing made a sound

and swung between two skies to brush

her feet upon the ground

Source of the text – Don Paterson, Rain: Poems.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p. 6-7.

TJB: The absence of a child fills up the swing. Song-iambics & ballad verse sound child-like here; we hear the speaker’s grief, deeply sublimated.