Seven o’clock and the early October sun
has yet to appear on the Ennistymon hill.
Darkness eliminates the grass and stones,
but a kitchen light comes vaguely over the fields.
In the calm I hear the patient sound of cattle
as the morning advances on Killaspuglonane.

Another day in Killaspuglonane.
From my study now in the sky-reflected sun
I can see the outlines of our neighbour’s cattle.
They are scattered against the grey of the western hill.
Shadows disintegrate along the fields,
and here and there the light discovers stones.

As the light brightens, walls made of grey and white stones
crisscross the small divisions of Killaspuglonane.
The corn has been harvested in all the fields,
and the grass is a wet green in the risen sun.
Our watertank stands squat on the brow of the hill
where Micky Vaughan is striding toward his cattle.

His dogs run round him, barking in the cattle.
moving them down toward the passage through the stones
that turns in to the cowhouse underneath the hill.
It’s milking time in Killaspuglonane.
After awhile, his cap set against the sun,
he will carry our can of milk across the fields.

His news will accompany him across his fields,
disturbed at the falling market price for cattle,
pleased at the unseasonable persistence of the sun.
Then together we’ll view the latest pile of stones
dug from the various corners of Killaspuglonane,
by another neighbour, who lives on another hill.

In time Jimmy Murray, who hauled those stones over the hill
to rebuild the walls where our acre adjoins Micky’s fields,
will leave his house at the edge of Killaspuglonane.
He will pass along the road with his dogs and cattle,
Then return to help me lift and place the stones.
Perhaps we will finish the walls while we have the sun.

Any day now this sun will disappear from the hill,
and rain will drop like stones on all our fields,
and the cattle will plod through the mud in
 Killaspuglonane.

(Knute Skinner)