Germany drops its longest word for labelling
Cattle after changes in the law
First the word
Then the object of the word itself.
Field evaporates, fences fade
And the bucket swinging in the hand
Of the farmer’s daughter melts
On the way to the milking shed.
Soon, all is still and unbearable
And what remains unnamed resumes
Its call for naming – like a beast
That wails until its easing.
I wonder, if again, we’d call
These things the word we put from mind?
Or instead, we’d simply let
Them stagger on their new-born
Legs, out from the yard buildings
And in to the brief unknown?
The sun is coming down.
The town is coming home.
The field begins once more to grow
And the fences deepen.
Patrick Toland is a graduate of the new Masters of Creative Writing in Oxford University. He was shortlisted for the Lightship Poetry Prize 2011 and was a winner of the Bodleian Science Library Poetry Competition 2011 and the Edward Stanley Prize. He was selected as an emerging writer by Windows Publication in 2010 and for the 2012 Poetry Ireland Introductions. In 2013 he was nominated for the Hennessy Literary Award.
