Poetry

The green glass vase will break
in transit

so smash it now;
either you will try
to carry your memento, and it will crack,
or you will refuse to leave it behind
and never travel.

broken is the only way to carry
the vase,
each piece a doll’s house saucer
of light,
each a palm open
to the room where you pack to leave.

Beat the light into crystals
so that you are free to move –
and when you travel,
fold them in a cloth.

At your destination,
don’t try to reassemble
the vase;
its old form has gone –

but in the workshop at the lough-side
tip out the crushed pieces
and fuse them into something new.

Sculpture of Nine Verses
                        (Inspired by Saloua Raouda Choucair) 

I’m drawn
            by interlocking pieces
                                                balance

grace between each line
how space alters          every note
            how                 each     limb

striking alone
                        is softened in shadow
when lying down together 

                  I listen             cannot recall voice until
through silence
                          you return

the rise and fall of your imperatives
come here
                                                     listen you

            we are in umbra now
gaps between               take shape
                       open                and close

rearrange                     alter
                        features align
like verses –

                                    we elide –
hairline throat              
nose                 our mouth        clavicle 

nape                 the cages of our hearts
the pit of us                
                                    our bald scars

deliverance

because I am typing your words
on tracing paper
                        typing as slowly

as saying a prayer
                        so that you
are the fixed centre around which

my eye moves
            because I am doing this
in a room I have made white –

because there has been too much blood
in our years together –
and because     it is only in this solace

of white           in this slow action
that the next word will come
            because of the space –

created by the time
                        between words
                        all of the spaces white

and because of the echo
            of the typewriter
in this empty room           empty

            save for a bed
white of course
                        because of this

you have delivered pink roses
with an abundance of leaves
their petals small tongues whispering

            their firm hearts layered
                        and beautiful to peel
it is because of the white

                         that the roses are here
imploring dancing                   dancing
under a candelabra of white papers 

Adrift

It’s November and half way through the Our Father
when Richie lifts his head and slurs ‘Halloween

be thy name.’ We serve plates of food –
little rescue rafts on an uncertain sea.

Even the homeless centre reminds me of you:
the way you talked to the man on the street in Dublin,

bought him a meal in The Bleeding Horse and told him
you’d just lost God. I didn’t know who was helping who.

Richie shovels bolognese, his head hits the table.
Coaxed into standing, he slides

backwards and forwards in unlaced shoes,
‘Come on lad! Come on mate!’

A bruise for a face. He falls and rises, slips
and staggers away between unsteady men.

The chairs are wiped, the floor is brushed,
we wash our hands, and the room steadies.

I remember O’Shea on the steps of The Merrion Hotel –
clean-shaven, his hand out for money, his soft voice.

I gave him five euros just to listen to his story
and wondered if he knew you:

the Good Samaritan from Fermanagh
clutching National Geographic shouting

‘There is nothing. Only this.’