"The city falling ruinous, slowly by weather"

Still got weather on my mind ... Perhaps it's because the curtain finally came down on the most merciless New England winter in recent memory.

A quick follow-up to my previous post: Van Morrison's lyrics about the Irish weather evoke the words of several of his countrymen. From the novel Watt, penned by Dublin-born writer Samuel Beckett: "And of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush." From British poet Carol Rumens: "'My' Belfast is a muse-city, a city of weather and uncertainty." And Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson: "The weather was then as the weather is now: a defiance of supposed seasonal norms."

Finally, there is this excerpt from John Hewitt's poem "Because I Paced My Thought." Hewitt, like Patterson, was born and raised in Belfast.

Because I paced my thought by the natural world,
the earth organic, renewed with the palpable seasons,
rather than the city falling ruinous, slowly
by weather and use, swiftly by bomb and argument
I found myself alone who had hoped for attention.