Two Poems by Dane Holt

Grief

is busy, right now, explaining itself
—its remit, its desired outcomes—
at a dinner table at a conference

about grief; it is turning itself
inside out; no one is able to eat,
is either bored, concerned,

or embarrassed, the margins are thin.
One day or one month from now
it might be a window looking out

onto another window
across a harbour of years. Until then,
it is not the sun standing by after

an afternoon of rain, sorry.
And it is not this poem
which is nothing

if not the last word
on that moment the rain stops
but the windscreen wipers

keep going, clearing—what?—away;
or a night of close, almost-
unbearable heat, the car alarm outside

you sort of miss once it stops.

Nature Poem

This grey heron
assembling & disassembling
its own image

in the slow moving Lagan
is not poetry; it begins
its embarrassing take off procedure

and is not poetry—
as cumbersome at first
as St Christopher

in mid-stream
adjusting & readjusting
the weight on his shoulder

of another St Christopher
who bears on his shoulder
etc.

(Christopher might translate
as ‘grief bearer’, but this is not—)
before, all

of a sudden, almost
imperceptibly, the heron’s load
lightens slightly.

Dane Holt’s Father’s Father’s Father was published in 2025 by Carcanet.