Wedding Gift
i.m Raymond Carver, 1938-1988
Salmon leaping eternally against a well-lit sky,
bend ecstatic towards the waterfall, in the wedding gift you painted.
Like Chekhov, I map new routes from the town where I’ll soon die
but now and then I stop, admiring these fish that try
to tussle free from the river; a push, then they’ve succeeded -
salmon leaping eternally, against a well-lit sky.
If I’d even a year! I make a list; eggs, hot choc, buy
cigarettes labelled ‘ Now’, at last book that Antartica ticket!
Like Chekhov,I map new routes from the town where I’ll soon die
and must continue the struggle upstream, despite the lie
I lived; once drunk, wife-leaver, bum - but now, like determined
salmon, leaping eternally against a well-lit sky
in this picture you gave us for our last fling; that high
sad, tacky affair in a Reno chapel, after the blood I’d coughed.
Like Chekhov, I map new routes from the town where I’ll soon die
and am travelling faster now, suddenly floating high
where my poems make me beloved; yet still I watch over my head
salmon leaping eternally against a well-lit sky -
like Chekhov, I map new routes from the town where I’ll soon die.
From Eating Baby Jesus, Dedalus Press 1994.
Socrates in The Garden
In his world he moves,
January light fooling
this place into beauty -
broken glass glittering
on the flats’ side lane,
white graffitti translucent
on the school wall;
Pushers out!...Egg head...
Fuck off...Wanker Meehan.
Old shoes, their laces tied,
dangle over electricity wires,
beside pulled-apart phones
flung there, high above
burnt mattresses, gutted cars
and rusting bikes -
used needles jabbing the way
the children go to school.
Parents yell,
their calls like cigarette ash
billowing out
in front of their washing
hung from shabby balconies,
the grandmothers busy below
with Moore Street prams piled
with fruit, football hats, lighters
fireworks and wrapping paper -
all the stolen seasons trundling
their way to the market
down roads Matt Talbot roamed
with drink, then manic prayer,
his chains the size of a horse’s trace
wrapped around his body
one hot June day,
where he fell on Granby lane.
And in this world,
Margaret goes to get married
in a horse- drawn carriage
around Stephen’s Green.
All skin and bone,
pneumonia choking
her final days,
her name will become a ribbon
and light, on the Christmas tree,
an embroidered square
on a patch-work quilt
hung in a vast, cold place,
where the young priest
talks only to old women,
the wind outside blowing litter -
caged pigeons set free from rooftops,
rising up oblivious as Liffey gulls.
In his world he moves,
his head slanted
against doorways,
his cheeks bruised
with the cut of a city night.
Hearing the cathedral chime
hourly, cheeky, melodic -
Three Blind Mice...
In Dublin’s fair city,
he queues at the soup kitchen’s door
choosing food
over the bell-ringer’s charm.
His hunger slouching
in second-hand clothes
against the city wall,
is so acute it sends
early morning nightmares -
How the stained glass
in Nicholas of Myra cracks,
how Major Sirr rises from his grave
pulling St Weburgh’s apart,
strutting downThomas Street to watch
Emmet’s delirium beheaded!
And sometimes into his world
you move, cooling his fever,
wetting his mouth
with fresh basil leaves
of hope, lifting his thoughts,
so that far away,
over the copper domes, lifting his thoughts,
so that far away, over the copper domes,
the shut-up, run-down flats,
he can see in the garden
Socrates -
His toes cracked, his robe
thrown across shoulders
chipped with neglect,
part of his nose fallen lost
among polite glass-houses,
herbaceous borders
and Victorian signs.
But his stare is deep-eyed
and his thoughts are river sounds
original like rain
on this bright day.
He is finding a space for you both
in the otherwise wild
of your mid-lives, letting
your hard city fall way
with each push of the gate
inwards to his green heaven.
Run to his shape
the willow trees whisper,
Pull our leaves,
like hair from his face -
find his eyes staring,
questioning you.
from Socrates in the Garden, Dedalus Press, 1998.
Two Women in Kosovo
‘I’m going to jump,’ her sister whispers,
holding out her hand.
And so they jump together- so naturally
they might be young girls again
leaping at waves on their holidays, jumping
across rivers on their way to school,
pulling each other over the road
to grown-up things.
From the side of the truck
out onto the rolling dust and scrub they jump,
tea and bread they’ve just eaten with the others,
a thump in their stomachs when they fall.
Holding hands tight, they jump -
two women in Kosovo leaving behind
their children, their mother, their husbands
gunned down by Serbs
in a roadside café minutes before
and now a mountain of grief
being driven to a mass grave
somewhere these sisters will never find.
One looks back for a second,
feels her whole life piled ugly there,
feels it was beautiful once -
the pull of her man reaching for her
in the middle of the night,
the bitter pain she knew when her four year old
left her for his first day at school,
her mother calling her back home
on a cold winter’s night.
Luck chooses where we are born,
passes us through life
unscathed by violence.
Luck is this brave woman now
defying the brutal guards,
rising alive
from her pretend death
and the horror of corpses, the people she’s loved -
a frightened survivor pulling
her frightened sister forward,
a sister whispering ‘jump!’.
From Poems for Breakfast, Dedalus Press, 2004.
