It's raining on black coal and warm wet ashes. There are tyre-marks in the yard, Agnew's old lorry Has all its cribs down and Agnew the coalman With his Belfast accent's sweet-talking my mother. Would she ever go to a film in Magherafelt? But it's raining and he still has half the load

To deliver farther on. This time the lode Our coal came from was silk-black, so the ashes Will be the silkiest white. The Magherafelt (Via Toomebridge) bus goes by. The half-stripped lorry With its emptied, folded coal-bags moves my mother: The tasty ways of a leather-aproned coalman!

And films no less! The conceit of a coalman... She goes back in and gets out the black lead And emery paper, this nineteen-forties mother, All business round her stove, half-wiping ashes With a backhand from her cheek as the bolted lorry Gets revved and turned and heads for Magherafelt

And the last delivery. Oh, Magherafelt! Oh, dream of red plush and a city coalman As time fastforwards and a different lorry Groans into shot, up Broad Street, with a payload That will blow the bus station to dust and ashes... After that happened, I'd a vision of my mother,

A revenant on the bench where I would meet her In that cold-floored waiting room in Magherafelt, Her shopping bags full up with shovelled ashes. Death walked out past her like a dust-faced coalman Refolding body-bags, plying his load Empty upon empty, in a flurry

Of motes and engine-revs, but which lorry Was it now? Young Agnew's or that other, Heavier, deadlier one, set to explode In a time beyond her time in Magherafelt... So tally bags and sweet-talk darkness, coalman, Listen to the rain spit in new ashes

As you heft a load of dust that was Magherafelt, Then reappear from your lorry as my mother's Dreamboat coalman filmed in silk-white ashes

Notes: I was also listening to Seamus Heaney recite (this poem begins at 21.15 minutes) this sesitina earlier this morning. Appropriate I think, to add it to the Big Book on a day when many others are "filmed in silk-white ashes".