In The Poetry

Her News

You paused for a moment and I heard you smoking
on the other end of the line.
I pictured your expression,
one eye screwed shut against the smoke
as you waited for my reaction.
I was waiting for it myself, a list of my own news
gone suddenly cold in my hand.
Supposing my wife found out, what would happen then?
Would [...]

Jokes

Don’t tell me jokes,
I know about jokes.
They think they are funny.
They think they can get away with things.

I don’t know everything about them,
just enough. I know this:
that they refuse to be remembered,
slipping the mind’s fingers,
a shoal of laughter, vanishing.

And this: that they hide still inside,
deeply. Delinquent poems,
absconders from custody.

Of course they think it a great [...]

The Domesticity Of Giraffes

She languorously swings her tongue
like a black leather strap as she chews
and endlessly licks the wire for salt
blown in from the harbour.
Bruised-apple ed she ruminates
towards the tall buildings
she mistakes for a herd:
her gaze has the loneliness of smoke.

I think of her graceful on her plain-
one long-legged mile after another.
I see her head [...]

What I wouldn’t give for a nine to five.
Biscuits in the right hand drawer,
teabreaks, and typists to mentally undress.

The same faces. Somewhere to hang
your hat and shake your umbrella.
Cosy. Everything in its place.

Upgraded every few years. Hobbies.
Glass of beer at lunchtime
Pension to look forward to.

Two kids. Homeloving wife.
Bit on the side when the occasion arises
H.P. [...]

I would associate it with perhaps three things: Beethoven’s late quartets, Russian movies by Eisenstein of heroic workers and so on, D H Lawrence’s ideas about sex and perhaps Michaelangelo’s sculpture, that kind of thing. I think I was 21 when I wrote it and those were the kind of things that I had in [...]

Donegal

for Ellie

Ardent on the beach at Rossnowlagh
on the last day of summer,
you ran through the shallows
throwing off shoes, and shirt and towel
like the seasons, the city’s years,
all caught in my arms
as I ploughed on behind you, guardian still
of dry clothes, of this little heart
not quite thirteen,
breasting the waves
and calling back to me
to join you, swimming [...]

This poem was written for the birth of my cousin’s daughter.

And let us say

That if the linen flapped too loud
The washing line was taken down

And if a shopdoor bell was rung
Its tongue was held with cotton thumbs

And if a milkfloat tattled by
It was flagged down and held aside

And should the rivers drown us out
We had [...]

The Arrival of Brighteye

My mommy gone over de ocean
My mommy gone over de sea
she gawn dere to work for some money
an den she gawn sen back for me

one year
two year
tree year gawn

four year
five year
six year come

granny seh it don’t matter
but supposin I forget her
Blinky Blinky, one two tree
Blinky Blinky, remember me

Mommy sen dis dress fah [...]

Snowed In

Bare trees, bare shrubs in blossom,
Far off, on the water meadow,
The air turned whitish too,
Swans camouflaged to the point
Of perfection, invisible,
While hunger compels
The little dark muntjac deer
To trespass on hedged lawns -
Exposed-, their eyes dazzled
When the sun’s rays erupt,
Flashing in so much white,
Their wary ways fluffed.

2

But for milkman, laundryman
Who braved the lane cut off
Slushed [...]