She Weeps over Rahoon

	Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,
	Where my dark lover lies.
	Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,
	At grey moonrise.

	Love, hear thou
	How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
	Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling,
	Then as now.

	Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold
	As his sad heart has lain
	Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould
	And muttering rain.

	                                     1912



Note: "[C]omposed in Trieste shortly after his 1912 visit to the grave of Michael Bodkin at Rahoon, Ireland. Bodkin was the Galway sweetheart of Nora Barnacle and the man whom Joyce used as the model for Michael Furey, whose memory Gretta Conroy evokes in the closing pages of "The Dead." (Fargnoli and Gillespie)

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