Mary de Rachewiltz's at 90

YOUR FATHER’S DAUGHTER           
                      

For Mary

everything carried a poet’s fingerprints
books chairs Gaudier Brzeska on the dining table
all practically whole as a poem
all caught in the echoing dream
making your castle a universitas

oh it was good to be there
breathe-in the more than mountain air

and wander along those stone laneways
carrying the enormity of the gorge
the orchard the olive grove
all flickering through the leaves of language
with your mother’s violin bowed silently still
in notes of rain and cloud

below in the cobbled courtyard
I was not surprised to see
your father doffing his straw hat to you
and heading smiling down the pathway
towards his vineyard planted
high against the falling Alps

Desmond Egan, 2015. (Reproduced by permission of the author.)