Primroses

Arthur Morrin and Peter Kane
built our house in a patient time,
hoisted blocks, hammered nails,
gouged window spaces out of hostile
stone in the walls of an old stable
while chestnuts fattened on the trees outside
and while snow fell and froze and melted.

Our dray always lurched into this hollow
in the shimmering heat of Summer
when we swayed on top of a load
of hay and waited in fright to fall off.
We had a tractor alright, an old
monster on giant wheels that could have done the job
but my father would rather horse and dray.

Rust and rain have taken the tractor,
the horse is slaughtered, the dray decayed
the motorway buried the lurching hollow
where we perched on the hay in terror.

But primroses which someone
- perhaps the grandmother taken by an epidemic
in the 'Twenties, one of the lost millions -
planted on a bank appear every Spring
and the children still laugh at the good of it.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, February issue

With Niamh in Harcourt Street Children's Hospital

The intravenous drip machine doggedly
hums through the night,
breaks into fits of frantic ticks
as if it wants to fight its way out of the room.
I have my comforts: book, newspaper, flask of tea
and most importantly: a naggin in my briefcase.
A child wails on the wards, always;
shoes clack on tiles;
you, inscrutably
suck on your soother;
I eye the briefcase.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, September issue

Chinese painting: Young lady with butterflies

See how the butterflies quiver round the shoulders:
it's a delicate little piece, isn't it?
Yes, I mean the painting, not the girl, you scoundrel!
See the way they sweep and swoop, hover and peep,
see how she skips in fright, look, she's terrified!
And the dress, the way it swirls, look at those folds, that silk!
It will add to your home should you decide to buy.
Yes, terrified! She flings her small hands in the air
but as she hops away she keeps her poise
and - yes! - the butterflies seem to flirt with her!
And she seems to frolic with the flirting wings
- a man of your discernment would appreciate such grace -
and as they dance around the shoulders, as they soar and drift,
see how she sheds her formality -
(as I'm sure you know that was no small thing
for a Chinese girl in the court in those days)
- in dismay
yet keeps her gracefulness despite her fear.

She skips so daintily because the feet are bandaged,
the toes bent back, it would hurt too much to flee.
They say that inside the bandages the feet went bad
but a man of your learning would know that already.
Wonderful how art can transform such material
into something you would pay to put on your wall.

Published, 1997, in Snakeskin, August issue

Dancing with the Germans

At the start, our women itched for exotic Germans
who stuttered with empty tanks from neutral skies,
London, Bristol, Liverpool, crackling behind them,
and drifted onto soft, Irish grass among bored cattle;
where we arrested them, rattled them swiftly to camp
to plot impossible escape, brood on Fatherland,
wait for triumph or shame, finality, a new start.
We were not hard on them (we got no thanks),
paroled them to public houses, dance halls, our girls.
When they stepped out to Jimmy Dunny's Orchestra
they tantalized the Newbridge women
for they were novelties, starched, stiff,
every man an officer, or as good as!
Then on a chilly Saturday night at war's end,
shrivelled faces framed in barbed wire fences
stared awkwardly from a newsreel at our women;
who learned new names: Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka;
innocence shuffled away. Bands tuned up in dance halls;
later in Lawlor's Ballroom Jimmy Dunny played
smartly polkas, old time waltzes, two-steps, but no-one wanted
to dance with the Germans, in the shocked silence.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, September issue

Exile

His childhood died in a nightmare.
He was in the front garden
of a country cottage
like a cottage in a story;
his father was there too, digging:
everything was perfect.
Then the child looked across the fields
to the small hills, like hills
out of a children's book,
and a mushroom cloud loomed up
from behind the small hills,
sombre and monstrous,
as colossal as a mountain.

The child knew the world was dead.
A cloud of grief and despair
unfolded in him.
His father noticed nothing
and kept on digging through the death.
The child woke up but it was true:
the cloud was there, the world was dead.

He still wants to return.
Once I saw him look in winter
over the city's snow capped roofs
and past the icy suburbs
and across the white fields
to the hills behind the city,
and I saw him shake his head
and flick his cigarette
into the slushy street,
where it hissed and died.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, October issue

Lambing time

You could read a book in this light! the boy cried
laughing at how the moon lit up the field
as his father moved softly from sheep to sheep
as they gave birth in the brilliant moonlight
to glistening lambs who got a lick from the ewes
and shook themselves as if they had no time to lose
and went straight for the teat and got down to work
and it was like magic, like something in a book
to the wondering boy who knew nothing yet
of the hour of terror in the abattoir
of machines for driving spikes through heads
of blood darkening on tiled floors
under brilliant slaughterhouse lights.

Published, 1998, in Snakeskin, February issue

No sanctuary

Doesn't it sound like peace in this chapel?
Stooped old men in a dark choir, girded with rosaries
peer from monks' hoods with wrinkled faces,
raise voices to god in harmony,
swelling and soaring, the stained glass windows seem to listen:
you'd think humanity had surpassed humanity.

One of these men will walk from this church in anger,
one will leave with a sly smile twisting his lips,
one will plot and plan and pretend
and one will strike a bitter blow to fix
one who played a bitter trick on him. Yet

the faithful visit here for peace and for goodness
and these men's hands make miracles of stone and earth
and miracles of ink and paper, lives and voices;
every patch of grass, every field and corner
speaks of peace and of work and of goodness.

But here too men speak spitefully of other men
and here men thwart other men for bitter decades,
detestation and dislike make friends
and men who whisper ill of other men are praised;
men plot to deny their brothers' advancement
and go to the grave with curses for prayers.

Peace visits this place no more often
than cities that glare with neon,
than streets where good things are done and hearts broken,
than streets where hearts are mended and bad things done;
and there is no refuge from the world in the end
in this place there is no refuge,
there is only the world in the end.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, September issue

The greatest teacher in Western Europe

I am the Greatest Teacher in Western Europe, Larigy said.
Under the taut skin the skull grinned. The glasses glinted
when it was time to beat the boys - his favourite time of day.
Brother Larigy never hit us straight away for our incompetence
but loved a feast of beating at the break, so he saved us up.
Once he let us off, we thought, to play in the first snow of winter
but when our frozen hands started to thaw and began to hurt
he took the leather out - a slim leather, nine inches long, and stiff -
and lined us up and slapped us, doubling our pain and his pleasure.
He liked to threaten to pull boys' trousers down and watch them squirm
but once a boy whose house Larigy used to visit turned and hissed
'I'll tell' and Larigy let him go and flinched as if he had been hit.
One day we were sent up to the water tower to see the dentist
when we came back a Higgins twin couldn't say the prayers for bleeding
- Our Lady of this pray for us, Our Lady of That, pray for us -
Larigy slapped his face until the blood poured out. We resumed praying
with blood streaming out of Higgins' mouth at each Our Lady.
The greatest teacher in Western Europe? As far as we could see,
better had he been a bachelor scratching a living up
a mountain, spending his nights muttering in the pub.

Published, 1998, in Snakeskin, February issue

How it begins

Her breath is rank with booze,
she fumbles a carnation
into his hand, murmurs
I've always fancied you.
A flurry of too-sweet scent
catches in his throat;
she whirls and titters
at someone else's joke.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, September issue

Treasure

A tide washed her to his solitary island,
left her intact on its wet stones.
Morning uncovered her in first daylight.
He contemplated her from all sides, appraised.
Her eyes were slightly open. He held his breath,
edged icy eyelids back: eyes brown, black-shadowed,
earth-warm amber turned to cold;
red hair - she must have been a whip-tongued scold in life.
She dressed for her final act in a denim jacket,
lumberjack shirt, warm amber to match the eyes,
navy jeans plastered to thighs by sea water;
her skin so cold. Quiet: nothing stirred: wave, wind or bird.

He spent hours with her in night's privacy,
her cold beauty a wonder to his trembling hands,
her cold flanks smooth like sea-worn stones,
her mounds, her hollows, burning marvels.
In morning's indifferent newness he carried her back;
water sidled in, lifted her up, took her out.
He dried her clothes - sour smell of steam from his range -
folded and smoothed them, shoved them under his bed.
That night he drank, remembered mounds, hollows,
fingered her clothes, fumbled inside her jeans,
thought of her appearing out of water, naked,
dripping salt, warm, to perch on his lap.
He packed her clothes into his smouldering range,
cremated them one by one - a night of stoking, poking -
felt in hot ashes for zips, buttons,
stumbled in unforgiving day to his solitary beach
to fling them into suffocating water,
pressed fists against his island's wet stones
to cool a violent pain from her burning zips,
scalding buttons, gold and silver of her estate.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, February issue.

A note to Patrick Morrin, deceased

Your grandchild Elizabeth stood on the altar
- you died long before she was born or the church built -
and read verses you wrote forty years ago
about death and rebirth, winter and spring
in front of your son Laurence's coffin,
he dead at seventy four, she stunned with grief
beautiful too as she read your lines
to the congregation. A child
cried, Mammy I want to go home.

Laurence's sons lifted his coffin heavily
onto their shoulders, conveyed him through incense
out of the church, down the hill, under dark skies,
hedges dripping silently, tarmac glistening,
up the wet gravel road to Caragh graveyard.

He lies near his brothers Edward, Arthur, John,
a short stroll from the old graveyard
where you await resurrection
by Robinsons' field.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, February issue