Shouldring Back the Day by Dennis Greig

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SHOULDERING BACK THE DAY

Seán Body ———————————————————

Belfast Lapwing

SHOULDERING BACK THE DAY

Seรกn Body

Belfast LAPWING

First Published by Lapwing Publications c/o 1, Ballysillan Drive Belfast BT14 8HQ lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com http://www.freewebs.com/lapwingpoetry/ Copyright ÂŠ SeĂĄn Body 2013 All rights reserved The author has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Since before 1632 The Greig sept of the MacGregor Clan Has been printing and binding books

All Lapwing Publications are Hand-printed and Hand-bound in Belfast Set in Aldine 721 BT at the Winepress

ISBN 978-1-909252-31-8

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledgements are due to the following, where some of these poems were first published, some in early versions: MAGAZINES: Brando’s Hat, Dream Catcher, The New Writer, Pennine Platform, Poetry London ANTHOLOGIES: Poems from the Readaround (Manchester Poets 1995) Nailing Colours (Crocus Books 1997) Poetry in the Parks (Sigma 2000) At the End of the Rodden (Manchester Irish Writers 1997) The Retting Dam (Manchester Irish Writers 2001) Peace Poems (Crocus Books 2003) Bridges, O’Connell Street, and The Hunger were broadcast on BBC Radio Cuius Animam was a prize winner in the Bridport Competition in 1993 and was published in the competition anthology. Blight won first prize in the Ver Poets Competition 1999 and was published in Vision On 1999, as were High Peak and Shoes. Light was commended in the Ware Competition 2000 and published in the competition anthology. Reflection, and Cuius Animam were included in the 1995/8 version of the Collection, Witness; and the Seasons sequence was published in a limited edition, Seasons (Glass Head Press 2003), as were High Peak, Morning, Daughter of Jairus and Nativity.

iii

CONTENTS ONE

REFLECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WIRELESS COMES TO TEMPLEGLANTINE WEST GOOD FRIDAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CUIUS ANIMAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IN BOBEEN’S BOG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PORTRAITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WINDING WOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A GWALL OF COSTERWAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BLIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BRIDGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. Bridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. The Dart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. O’Connell Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. Mist over Howth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. The Hunger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi. The Haggard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 20 21 21 22 23 25 26 29

TWO

SQUIRREL PLAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SYNAESTHESIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CELEBRATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MORNINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NUDE WOMAN DRYING HER FEET . . . . . . . . . . . . SHOES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GLOCKY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GERTIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IF HE COULD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MISS OLGA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ESCAPOLOGIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PILLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRIEST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 44 46 48 49 51

SCAFFOLDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PIECES FROM A LIFE BOOK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. Her Drawing (Age 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. Pasting photos (age 14) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Dream (Age 20) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WITNESS AT AN EXECUTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

52 53 53 53 54 55

THREE

SEASONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. Seasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. Dara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. Writing Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Mary Murriherty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi. Béarla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii. Muiréad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

FOUR

EYING THE RESERVATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. High Peak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. Eying the Reservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. Dawn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. Azaleas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Cold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi. Seeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii. Chapel of Rest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii. Three Months Later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix. Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NATIVITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

SEÁN BODY: A Biographical Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ONE

IN MEMORY Maurice Body (1902-1991) Helen Ita Body (1911-1988)

REFLECTION How they were then fire eagering the still faces– grandmother, mother, son and the simple aunt – clutched around a small evening moment. If someone spoke, I don’t remember but know what they might have said: something mundane, something too ordinary: The evening is drawing in put another sod on the fire. Something temporal (or because this moment is an accumulation) one might have begun: I remember… Sitting there in the taut hemp chair that patterned bare thighs like knitting looking out at the darkening window seeing mirrored, this small group intimate over the hearth’s flame– and one is turned away watching a reflection.

WIRELESS COMES TO TEMPLEGLANTINE WEST broadcast of GAA match from the Polo Grounds, New York

It might be a vow they’ve taken this the Grand Silence: the tonsured line of bowed heads drawn to the quiet darkness of this bachelor place. Jack Ahearn amiable as if cronies dropped by these men with sons, eager for the match that tonight will bridge an ocean. The Pilot eye a green bubble balancing shrills and whistles. “Atmospherics,” Jack says, taking the cup of water to spill on the curved spike that takes wire into the ground. “Ah you have it there,” my father says a recognisable Bail ó Dhia oraibh go léir breaking the scree of static. I want to set the dial spinning through fjords and icefloes continents and oceans, from rainforest to parched desert, to hear as it trips: Hilversum, Rome, Vienna, the dissonance between places. To nose to the lair of language, nuzzle its warm ferment, feel infinity up close. Tonight the world’s a small lit dial a violin straining for the most unreachable note an eye that is a green stillness.

Bail ó Dhia oraibh go léir: a salutation like ‘God bless’. Literally, prosperity from God be with you all. Specifically associated with Michael O’Hehir, who started his match commentaries thus.

GOOD FRIDAY My grandmother knew there were forces to contend with: treacheries to ambush an unprotected moment. The sí gaoithe stalking a cornfield could in a twinkling, whip up the wildest dance to spirit a child, a stook, the fair-of-face might be heard sometimes: a blown voice addling the Bearnagh hills; an olagón on the wind. Or piseogs could blight a crop with a nest of glugars; milk a neighbour’s cow from a spancel slung over a rafter; tempt an autumn’s yield from one man’s farm to another– and days had censures. So, when the cow began her labour on the day no cow should my grandmother dropped to her knees on the pitted flags, prayed the calf would not be born dead and it was not. The lantern hung in the shed all night. The carbide hissed and the cow moaned: a low pleading, like despair of prayer petering out. In the morning the cow died. A hard year we had then, and “A hard lesson we’d learned,” my grandmother said, “tempting

the Lord to change his holy will.” As if a prayer might have a trick in it, like a given wish would turn a breathing child to an effigy of gold.

sí gaoithe: whirlwind (literally fairy wind) olagón: wail piseog: charm, spell glugar: an addle egg ‘on the day no cow should’: superstition that it was unlucky for a cow to calve on Good Friday.

CUIUS ANIMAM i. He was a kind moment on the way to school. The face behind a vat of boiling tar laying the dark surface of our way. Did we say more than “What’s the time?” “Time you were in school.” Was there laughter? A lonely man. We didn’t know then that grown up is the binding we put on loose chippings. Didn’t appreciate that we too were a bright moment on a dark road pretending freedoms. They tracked him in the dew his bare feet had wiped the grass’s tears. A good swimmer he’d tied a stone around his neck but was caught in the fall of an old tree. Died not of drowning but hypothermia. They took the door from its hinges to bear him home, laid him out in the narrow bed. ii. Six years old I listen to wind telegraph a raw caoin from pole to pole the wires slung like a bridge over low fields. It is the loneliest sound imaginable. It enters me like breath. caoin: lament 13

IN BOBEEN’S BOG Eight years old, already a veteran skilled in your ways, though never a disciple. Never your devotion to labour, hands raw with turf. What you couldn’t master chastened you like fire. “No heart for me,” you’d say as if only love made things happen. Down on your knees, fanning the measling ember, your flashing skirt signalling: There is smoke without fire. And the watched kettle slow-boils as the day wastes around you. For this we would work late into the evening, preyed on by midges, tired backs, fear of places emptying, becoming hostile. Naively we’d plan strategies map escape routes, slink away like burglars, taking the light. Back on the road, we’d ease into the long journey home half-doze to the ass’s trot – But now you’re waving the steaming kettle calling. Then trip. Sprawl face down on the scrunched turf; the precious liquid a skitter of dust mites. For a moment you are close to tears then a swift buff, your mettle shines, sparkles. “Someone must have an awful thirst on ‘em,” you say, looking around as if you might glimpse retreating heels a waving hand, a small cocked hat.

PORTRAITS In the one I hang, she’s pointing a finger: a child looking back at the barred door. Those dismantling the roof are neighbours, men who’d sat with her father, lent a jigging knee. Then, in summer dress she’s caught in headlights out of breath, trembling. The man taking her hand wears a feared uniform – Stories my mother told, hardly more. But years later she takes me back walks the bleak perimeter lips moving as if she does a station. Fields my grandfather toiled. The meadow a still testament defying the moor. Then downhill to where a soldier in the wrong uniform calmed a little girl’s fear companionable, walked her home.

station: a series of images representing the ‘Way of the Cross’ where people meditate as they move from image to image.

WINDING WOOL there in the dim kitchen shadows from the small oil lamp little sportive flags play among ancestors histories she reels with the slow thread and slow as labourers from the fields they come out of the past bow through a stooped door their shy blessings men who died of their lives a girl taken too beautiful they said women who grieved rosaries from dark hovels evicted broken the stunted lives weave a multi-ply thread she will knit to a garment

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a girl takenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: belief that people could be spirited away by faeries.

A GWALL OF COSTERWAN They find me out: those hybrid words that straddle languages – a scarred landscape stoic with accommodations. I want to pick them up in armfuls to carry them through fields like gwalls of costerwan: the dew-fresh dandelion we fed to laying hens, clearing fields before the farmer rose, for wouldn’t that oul skinflint be begrudging you the steam off his piss. And wasn’t it the cod, a score of pampered hens unbeknownst, feeding off his land. We’d laugh, pull chastened faces strike breasts for the irreverence– but wasn’t God the droll provider! I scan old letters, my mother’s phrasing a hybrid too, cadences her open vowels – the talk, the wit scurrilous yarns under-pinning friendships. Weeks counted in Sundays absences; who left, who’s leaving. Charting the inexorable drain, until worn out and lonely she too left, returning nightly to hard days on the leaca, docking mangels, hoeing drills, a grey weathereye trained on the Macgillicuddys.

Gwall: from Gabháil: armful Costerwan: from caisearbhán: dandelion leaca: the side of a hill Macgillicuddys: a range of mountains in Co. Kerry

LIGHT Vicarious vagrant feeding off those you fed: derelicts brought in from the rain. The sick, the troubled with but a ditch to lay down in. Those not born to it: dropouts, brain-injured for whom you kept a special place. Attentive, as if their oblique ramblings unlocked mysteries fine-tuned sensibility. “Once up in Carlow…” Distances they travelled. The same inclement weather. Rags drying by the open fire. Behind a curling finger, a covert tale: the Spalpeen and the Fianna– sons of the dispossessed. Others you were in fear of: the uninvited who knocked timidly victims of the treacherous bend streaming blood and remorse. “I saw your light.” The votive lamp that kept a sanctuary. You’d dress their wounds lay them down by the revived fire share the covers from your bed. Then sleep fitfully straining for the slightest move. Later he’d tease, your sleeping partner: “One o’ these fine mornin’s we’ll be wakin’ up to find us dead in our bed.” 18

Now, after your late exile a long way from that quiet place we’ve carved Rest on a granite slab by a raised motorway reprising nights when sleep had left you alone by the window looking out on the alien highway that links restless cities. “Where do they all be going?” you asked, as if such fleeting presences truly troubled you. Now your question hangs over a new millennium: a night of frost and distances each star bright as when it shone. December 1999

Fianna: mythic Irish warriors, exponents of nobility, pride and culture. Spalpeen: Gaelic Spailpín, a migratory labourer; a person without means; a vagabond.

BLIGHT for Noel Connor

A decade of collaborations: DRAWN TO WORDS. But this is silence, stillness so deep it moves the eye. An expectation of ocean. These colours belong somewhere. Indeterminate outlines suggest a bird some fish, two seals– or just a west coast beach picked out in stone. You could tell our history in stone: this a shawled head back to the land expects no one; the weight of its grief binding like roots. A bruised sun lies low hardly revealed by the small wing of shadow. I almost listen for the dry throated cormorant– and I’m back walking a winter strand. Everywhere the eye turns is tormented: loss a witching note snaring the soul.

DRAWN TO WORDS: the title of an exhibition of paintings by Noel Connor, mostly collaborations with poets.

BRIDGES i. Bridges for Finn Deloughry

“The Shannon Bridge is crying tonight.” A thin wind running a wet finger round its steel rim wails like our history, takes you down streets you knew like a slash of the heart “Good places to leave from.” A random hand of destinations dealt out piecemeal: Quebec, Oslo, Kuala Lumpur. A Bristol dustman. A priest in Sarajevo. One who drew the short straw you put a flower on his grave. But voices you hear are further back meld the contours of geography: the map of inhabitations you carry on the tip of your tongue. Like Heaney’s bogland, each layer you strip has been camped on. You are more than historian: a teacher who loves the feel of stories. They need space to breathe in come by remote hills old settlements, evacuations warm slowly at the fire of attention. Histories that filled the cup of our lives – language become more than itself: how a way of telling can like a draught from childhood blast the senses open.

ii. The Dart The child you once were floats up toward broken windows. We remain in the shadow of the chestnut. John Ash, The Burnt Pages

Dublin Area Rapid Transit. Neat as an acronym. Eye on the target. Neat too its un-native sense of urgency, time pressing… The woman standing on Raheeny station has time on her hands, lets it slip through slow fingers. An anachronism in tropic yellow dress, flowered hat and sensible leather shoes that mark a territory, others do not encroach on: the small pale of shadow they skirt with bright confidence. Someone has left her here. The list of her body suggests an absence, the half-listening inclination she wears like deformity. They bewilder her these light leave-takings. Her goodbyes are sombre, inarticulate as those I remember: the diffident migrants for whom travel was an exposure. Those awkward adolescents on the edge of cramped seats, their careful bundles clutched to them like confidences; the train’s movement thrumming, drumming the incommunicable sense of loss… Forty years on, I’m thumbing the burnt pages remembering how, night falling, we watched Ireland’s Eye go out, our passage whip the indifferent ocean to a white rage.

iii. O’Connell Street Legless in Dublin. You can be forgiven a sick humour when all you’ve got to stand on is your arse. Perched here be the fountain of life: Anna Livia herself taking the waters, an’ a fine broad she is, shafts on her like an ass cart. What wouldn’t I be doin’ with them now! The floozie in the Jacuzzi. Now the hooer in the sewer, partial to empty cans, stale bread, pigeon droppin’s an’ the occasional rubber. An’ wouldn’t the man himself be making great art of it. He’s down Earl Street, leanin’ on a stick, with a hat that’s up to no good – Me? Sure that’d be tellin’. No accident Misses. Unless you count bein’ born. Come out like this, half finished. God on his uppers. Or maybe just frigged-off with all the shaggin’, downed tools. Champion a the workin’ man: that’s Jim Larkin, drawin’ himself up to his full height arms beseechin’ Rise Brothers, rise! You’ll always be shite if you let ‘em shite on you. Got it in one, James, like the pigeon anointin’ Daniel O’Connell’s noble pate. Not bad for a culchie, Dan. Won us emancipation. Like all we elevate endures bein’ shat on. Ask Charles Stewart Parnell. He’s above where the ways part: politician patriot, orator. All an Irishman needs

is his eloquence. Had a spot of bother with a mot, so we left him to the bed he’d made. Couldn’t’ be havin’ us liberated be a libertine. We’re forgivin’ of the dead. Built him a fine monument. And a square to himself. Over there, the GPO, bullet-scarred and ponderous; a proper place for poets and revolutionaries. Irishmen and Irishwomen in the name of God and of the dead generations… Ireland’s seven apostles (not the full complement) signing up for their memorial. Of such indiscretion we are born. Widest street in Europe, they’ll tell you. Never believe an Irishman when he’s tellin’ the truth. We’re carriers of history, a lost tongue. A European city now, the past a commodity saleable as a tinker’s prayer – Not a bad pitch for a beggar. I do alright. I’m legitimate. A man with no legs. You can’t fake that. What you see is what you get. This is me in me stood up sittin’ down your own Johnny-I-hardly-knew-you sweet as a peardrop.

culchie: Dublin slang for a country person hooer: whore

iv. Mist over Howth The bowed heads keep close to walls, hug boundaries. A cold mist shoulders back the day. In the muted church, a single light keeps faith; soft as a breath animates a hand, a face. If you should turn away, O Lord, how should I bear it? The coffin descending the slow aisle is too small to bear on shoulders. So light she seems he would run with her through the stopped town headlong the promised years; play sand castles on the beach laugh in tossed waters. Then brought up sharp she would scrutinise him with her candid childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes. She has transformed him his three months daughter. Gravity has entered his boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s frame: an acolyte in her ceremonial descending stone steps outstretched hands still as if they touch wonder tender the small white coffin ribboned like a bouquet.

v. The Hunger (i) 1847 It’s the hunger, your honour nothin’ but the hunger. I worked till I could stand no more. I’m faint with it now, sir. An’ there’s my wife at home an’ the six little ones. All we had was a handful of yellow meal the day before yesterday an’ nothin’ these two days. I’d go home to lie down, but I can’t be lookin’ in their eyes. The little ones lie down all day. When I enter they are still. My wife looks in the dead hearth. She doesn’t pray now. Beggin’ your pardon, your honour the hunger will be the death of us.

(ii) Touching finger to forelock voice appropriately deferential. These things we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget. The proud tongue shackled (an aberration to deaf ears). In its place a language to beg in. A blemish on the green shoot putrefies the land. They learn the scrunch and scrape of bailiffsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; boots; the hiss of water on raked coals; the meaning of dispossessed.

(iii) Famine Path, 1997 Like a penitential way we worry it with beads. A stooped wind burdening us as if we bear a disabling load: memory nursed like a need the hunger that brings us here as if on this bleak Calvary we might come on an affirmation of who we are like words from the cross. Our ancestors ate grass diseased lips dribbled green bile. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll make a song of it yet.

Section i is suggested by an account in Alexander Somervilleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Letters from Ireland during the Famine of 1847, Ed. K.D.M. Snell, Irish Academic Press, (1994). Letters first published in the Manchester Examiner.

vi. The Haggard (i) A strange name I thought it when I learned the meaning of the English word. Haggard: the expression of one wasted by want. As if English would always speak us false. Later I would learn it had come from the ice north: a garnering against weather. And “A bleak spot,” he’d found it. Laid lines: a fortification of conifer. Built byre and pigsty a cooped place for hens. Liked exactitude, neat enclosures. Was comforted by a closeness of walls: the paucity of opportunity from which he’d forged harmonies. Wrote himself here: the unpacked soul affecting a discreet flourish like a signature. Loved debate, the charge of argument, his “Not a hope” scything opposition. All the answers clear, proven. Saw the hand move: shadow evidencing light.

(ii) His pride in every inch: the tonsured lines of spruce and whitethorn; lacings of blackberry; svelte cherries giving side to prickly gooseberry; drilled vegetables that kept the wolf from the door; the well he divined and dug trusting to what was beyond his understandingâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; abandoned, flagged over. Now that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on tap whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d consider the mystery of water, sidle through the narrow gate with a thanksgiving? Only his prized rhubarb remains overgrown and over-ripe up on tiptoe straining for light.

(iii) Visitant Peat-smoke and silence. Darkness like hands tucking me in a drone of slow water. Here night is friendly rhythmic as a lullaby a breathing of mangers. Trespassing I pray for the dead wonder how long I can linger dew falling softly.

Haggard: Icelandic heygarthr: hay yard. Here, a small plot beside the house which my father cultivated as a cottage garden.

TWO

SQUIRREL PLAY Spring came by today looked in, in passing, lingered. In celebration, a small squirrel is rotavating my lawn; deft little diggers destruct a would-be-tame suburbia; juggle in the air some invisible nut. For hours it has indulged this infant play it will hone to a life-skill. Or perhaps it is a sleight-of-hand it practices tic-tac lips synchronising a comic patter, not yet sound. Already the lawnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a disaster new turf has not taken the promised green in sad little tufts withers. I should be busy with hoe and rake, but resist the carping voice lapse to a joyous indolence happy to host this bright illusionist.

SYNAESTHESIA He sees music. Notes fly from his fingers bright feathered circle dark planes, open valleys. One breaks, hangs for the stillest moment is ice sheeting a wooded lake. Barnacled branches extend iced fingers. The stalled hand an inch from her grieving form stiffens, drops to this cold room, the glacial clarity of journeys back. Alone by the crazed window he’s learned waiting, taps failed mantras, turns naturally to winter. But spring will tout promises, ice melt – a slow weeping from eaves, from trees– the river begin its long journey to the sea.

CELEBRATION Manchester, November 24, 1999

In pouring rain, the little globes of light on the pavement outside the Crowne Plaza steam like some bleak allegory. Aromatic urns that keep a vigil insinuate closed faces, the straining crowds that pick their way through deluged streets, the dissonant tenebrae of cars. Stringed lights dip and weave alleluias and lashed by all the evening can muster a bloated Santa shins up the Town Hall his bag of promises. Tonight the city reopens, defiant in commerce. Bigger, brighter, more exclusive. When the fallout settles the weak are absent. By the cash point, with its orderly procession of acolytes, a man in a bin liner has turned in for the night the sculpture he has made of his body a perfect chute for the forty five degree rain that knocks sparks off the building Niagaras the Yorkstone faĂ§adeâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; Should he celebrate anything it would be the ubiquitous plastic or despite rain, the mildness of weather. Two nights back, coldest of the year, a girl died fifteen, arms locked on the cold outside.

MORNINGS Hiroshima

i. August 6, 1945 Such tenderness she feels such trembling her anxious love pressed on him making him irritable, late. Such apprehension as if waking from a dream but she has dreamt only of children on a white beach, running toward the sun. ii. Long Stay Ward, 1995 The still, white ward waits like a bridal. Her world framed by a small opening that on good days lets out onto the sky. Sometimes she glimpses movement clouds, a tree. Turns her head slowly as one whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s learned a grave art. They do not tell her they are from the Enola Gay the tall Americans she acknowledges with mute grace incuriously smiles at the speaking lips. When they have gone she will settle into sleep in her dream she will walk upright in an open place feel air touch her skin like breath, like fingers. 37

NUDE WOMAN DRYING HER FEET painting by Degas 1885

If I were the artist I would paint hands precise, delicate cold as the Matterhorn. They say he had a lover once has staunched the wound with his art. Such knowledge can disarm a woman, make her vulnerable. The chemise rucks to a small white whisper. I endure his scrutiny the hand bending me over like a whore compliant for his penetration intimacy he will deny with sour strokes of his brush an argument of colour composition, light. As if I am mere presence: an orange, a pear. (An apple may tempt complicity, perception alter.) Already his vision fails blindness will become him. He does not see me. Paints one born for menial tasks shuttered rooms, earth colours. I dry my feet.

SHOES for Agnes (Susannah Marie)

Even the name was not your own picked up somewhere in that bleak childhood with the hand-me-down dress and the pilgrim shoes you’re wearing in the family portrait that’s survived your mother’s censure. She’s the dowager serene in borrowed blouse and pearls hair crimped to a bun, Tara brooch at her throat. On her right, your brother Tom matches the pose perfectly, immaculate in butterfly collar, bow tie, pressed suit. On her left, you, not belonging in someone’s party frock, the offending toe poking through the worn shoe, like a tongue stuck out at pretension. In your bed-fast years when your legs so locked on each other that not even love could prise them apart you asked for shoes, firm soled ones. Clarks or Ks would do. Loud-tipped ones, like the nurse’s resolutely drumming the morning corridor as if they would stamp out infirmity.

GLOCKY James Michael O’Shaughnessy the name on his property, the Social Security Book they secure in a locked drawer. Permit the bottle crushed to stoned lips that cannot slake his thirst or stem the compulsive babble; an argument he states and re-states ear cocked as if he listens surprised by his own erudition. Then baffled, strains harder becomes truculent, amused, laughs. Absorbed, sucks on the bottle like a soother – a garrulous infant for whom conversation is a trial to come, his few words primed like a punch for the below-the-belt moment: How’re tings in Gloccamara? Truculent rags thrust in the face challenge: Tell me dat now. Can’t can ye? None a ye. Head bobbing as if he ducks the hail of laughter, Hi Glocky, how’re tings? Fondles the depleting bottle, gluttonous for anonymity. Shambling trot breaking to a run as if he fears that someday someone answering will strike him dumb.

GERTIE At first it was little things, forgetfulnesses: a kettle left to sing, appointments missed. Eccentricities: shoes unmatched, hat at a raffish angle. Took midnight strolls. Returned to streets that had changed while she was out, fumbled keys in strange locks. Bewildered by kindnesses, took tea, smiled at faces, questions, strange wallpaper. Recognitions came and went as if a wind getting up swept them like confetti through her mind. (Old intimacies tossed against railings down sidings.) Thoughts too brief for recognition, leave disturbances. She sits behind a small window they grime with their passing, each a little more. Absence settles in stale rooms, becomes presence. Strangers come occasionally, wrestle the stiff gate, the rusted latch, linger irritably faces distorted with the ache of words.

IF HE COULD If he could remember who he was expecting, he might wrest his eyes from the door, let them fill with the blue of this single iris. A child’s gift, brought like a charm to dispel the emptiness round his cradled bed. It leans now from a low jar, as if it might give a little cough under its breath complicit in this place of whispers. Or his eyes might hold hers with that same still wonder who has yet to learn a gift can wound. Sun, like a fist through the latticed window, buckles his face. Something he should remember jabs at him. Jabs. Is it the day? At first he’d tried to mark the days with people coming and going, light and dark but keeps dropping off, waking in confused sunlight, not sure for how long he’s slept. “Is this today or tomorrow?” he asks the brisk young medic. “Yesterday,” she says, laughing– Names are only words, cannot fix a day a face. Her’s bright with reassurances, her clutch of purties: each a task for him to master, life to be relearned. Today, a wheelchair. “Your Rolls My Liege, take you to the races.” But his hands keep turning in different directions

and the chair spins round and round. Watched by the chorus of eyes he tests a laugh, then taking his cue spins wider, wilder â&#x20AC;&#x201C; gloriously inept hamming his desperation, hilariousâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; Spun out, a discarded Guy Fawkes hangs in the still chair, not a pennyworth.

purties: toys, playthings; a corruption of pretty.

MISS OLGA i. constrained her world of small steps avoiding contamination of cracks, of divisions the air between buildings eyes that pursue her throw daggers she is wounded by looks, a childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unease

ii. it cannot be rushed the cleansing of plate, saucer, cup scrupulously in their sequence gripped between finger and thumb agitating water whipped movements barked out like lashes immerse, scrub, rinse plate, saucer, cup holding them to the examining light uncertain, beginning again

iii. the moon peeps in at the edge of a curtain she has drawn double stretched with pins the bleak eye winks strips her to ice the ice weeps

iv. in the corner of a darkened room a woman is crouched hands cover her nakedness knees clamp, lips somewhere sound is beginning movement soon it will be day light will break in dust-fingers rifle the whimpering room

ESCAPOLOGIST At the dim reach of corridor where door closes on door the clock, an hour late, has stuck on winter. And in the winter ward, Mary, called Stella is burrowing out of her keep. A feral child eels between bars squeals down the chute of her memory thrilling to brief panics the expected arms– thumps the ground with a stunned Oh! Stalled for capture, sings: One little birdie sitting in a treetop sitting in a treetop, sitting in a treetop… Returned to bed, sleeps instantly. But almost in the moment of her eyes closing is off again, reconnoitring the territory testing for weaknesses. Days she’s been plotting escape. Tonight she will perfect it. She’s fascinated by hems. Tenderly as one might trace the line of a life listening fingers probe a coded Braille she must decipher. She appropriates everything: spectacles, wheelchair, others’ gifts. Challenged, scurries back to hide in pillowcases, sheets, the pink cardigan she morphs to a straightjacket. For a moment she is stumped. Then finds the thread she unpicks with fierce concentration.

Wearying, takes time out. A drink, a yawn, tells herself a joke. Smiles. Laughs. Then pitching it perfectly between coy and bashful, announces “I’ve wet my knickers,” and with a bleak wave, dies.

PILLS “Them’s her pills, the blue ones. Blue for the blues– like drawing the blind on the dark.” He leaves them on the table where she can reach, her hand a pale wing dusting the dark grain. Light is gathering in the garden bright pools draw the eye liquid-cool. Surprised by this Indian Summer a late rose luxuriates in its trim bed, unfolds like a girl to love. “It’s a grand day,” he says leaving the curtain drawn. Words have tripwires they implode, surface in brief recognitions, wounds put out like stones to step on. If he touched her, she would cry break in his hand like petal, like love. “Wednesday,” he says, as if a day might have significance be distinguishable from other days from weeks from years.

DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS Mark 5, 21-24, 35-43 News report, Kosovo 1999

Talitha koum. Talitha. Come, little girl, trust the hand that offers. A strangerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand different from the other. Eyes so gentle, I want to cry. They cradle me like water. Like water bathe me, wash the blood from my thigh. Wake, little girl from your stiff bed, rise fill arms that have grieved. That gently bear me up. This stranger I will not recognise. The word on your lip falters a hand tenses, is drawn away. O weep no more, my father I have risen. Listen I call your name. Precious in your eyes. Forgive me, my father your daughter died you will be childless though I live. O my father, did I always know how beautiful life is? Did you always look on me with this joy?

This agony, mouth like a pit open; has no sound. Eyes that were made to watch will not smile again. Again, my father, smile! Your daughter lives. See I bathe your tears. O weep no more, my father. Listen, I call your name. O holy one, let your hands not join, but open. Open.

PRIEST i.m. Fr. James

You brought me a poem like a child’s expression of faith. Too simple for my taste, too cosy. I looked for the dark: the spiked road you travelled of which your poem said nothing. Only your silence spoke it and your hands, broad-boned belligerent, humbled to reticence. You denied yourself doubt. God lodged in you, crucified each nail self-driven. Tablets that made you vague that left your mouth parched. “Just a glass of water,” you’d take grateful for brief respites the short walk animating you like a pilgrimage. Talk of music, art – friendship between us, like an infant we were careful not to wake. Now they strip from your coffin the trappings of vocation: chalice, breviary, cross. Leave this bare box that seems too narrow for your quiet shoulders as if even in death you are constrained.

SCAFFOLDER From where I kneel perspective elides your coffin as if it contains a mere sliver of you. Marking an immigrant’s reserve sixty years a toe in the water. Always the unease of something just kept in check. Sitting in the doorway of a pub “For the air,” you’d say not trusting interiors, the extra step. Acknowledging old muckers with the slightest nod the quip ever in readiness to ease an exit. You were mindful of tensions: drawing back to gauge an elevation the complexities already becoming clear. Each step a reminder of a brother whose scream was several seconds late. “An echo,” you said, “of something not heard.” A natural rigger, high in your crow’s nest you look down the chicane of moves half-taken wonder how all the bridges burned. Later, in the pub, they’ll play your music drink sentimentalities – how you’d smile from your distance. Letting them compose you. Safe in their hands. As these others that carry you now. They’ve draped your coffin with a tricolour, still showing its folds how you kept it pristine in a locked drawer.

PIECES FROM A LIFE BOOK i. Her Drawing (Age 8) Room at full tilt, walls peeling apart as if she sees everything obliquely warily out of the corner of a half-look head down, forward, turning, not turning. The brittle strokes solid as a keep keep in mind the huge door, her centrepiece forming under the dense crayon, grounds the fly-away walls, the line’s fluency stubbed– She’s forgotten windows. The curl of rags stowed to the raked corner coils from the watched door– waits.

ii. Pasting photos (age 14) carefully consider smooth the years’ contempt crazed image like cracked ice one hundred and fifty piece jigsaw part and reassemble a smiling girl say cheese louise silly expression not a smile small animal baring teeth click then lie this camera lies one for your book keep the trusting happy but who’s the white garden and where the smiling girl puff i paste her in and take her out poise the blade like a performer magicians cut horizontally as if legs might walk off with a stomach a mouth sing come ye back i cut vertically cleanly part her like a surgeon paste to left and right leave between the blank page i’m the invisible

iii. The Dream (Age 20) I sense it first, feel its still presence. Only the mask is visible, convex roughly meshed, cheeks bulge like a doll’s, blank eyes deep-holed paste-white nose, small vexed mouth clamped. Nightly it comes to me. Nightly I reach out and peel it away. Behind it, only another and another each with the same desolate mockery the same lonely ambiguity. I reach for it now, take it gently. Behind it there is nothing. I stroke its cold vacuity. Me, I’m whispering, ME…

WITNESS AT AN EXECUTION He pulled down my underthings, expelled himself in me. from a TV interview

Her language not rising to the occasion linen-cool dress crisp from the press gloved-fists a willed stillness, eyes– She wants him to see deep into that Gethsemane, the cup she will not let pass how she wills his watched death. She will not flinch; see justice give a last twitch, know its face forever. Hands search for a place, she should have thought of pockets. The stillness an intensity – like a devotion this waiting at the altar. Only the tic at her throat moves, quickens, races. And now he comes: the bulk of him the weight of him, the slow of him. His eyes have shut down. “Please don’t do this,” she’d pleaded. He lets himself be carried between uniforms. There should be rubble: he should feel sharp edges gouge bare flesh the desperation of that lonely PLEASE– a carcass without dignity a discarded thing. Note: In American states where victims and their relatives are allowed to witness executions, some retain execution for certain rapes. However, recently, to my knowledge, none have been carried out; but murderers who are found guilty of other serious crimes are more likely to face execution. In this instance, the only information I have is hearing the young victim describe her rape, in a TV interview and express her determination to witness the execution, the curious (innocent) language used to express her ordeal in such stark contrast.

THREE

SEASONS “In a rather deep hole, in a curve of the Medlock and surrounded on all four sides by tall factories and high embankments, covered with buildings, stand two groups of about two hundred cottages, built chiefly back to back, in which live about four thousand human beings, most of them Irish. The cottages are old, dirty, and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven, fallen into ruts and in part without drains or pavement, masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys… The race that lives in these ruinous cottages… must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity.” Frederick Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England

i. Seasons Hunger drove them here where only the spirit starved. Of all places, the one they would not have chosen. Among outcasts, they were outcast; carriers of disease, poverty their unforgiven history. And unforgiving. Fed cotton mills, dissension a plethora of wars; kept intact a dream of Ireland. Today, their memory’s an entertainment, a guided walk a footnote in the history of old Manchester – Yet so bleak this morning they might still be here, gaunt against the grudged light recognisable; the stoop of Connaught fields remembering the cut of an Atlantic wind the healing of seasons. 58

ii. Dara How does the oak survive where nothing grows? “Cut it down, Paddy.” An encumbrance in its own place. We rip deep roots. Here they will build a temple to cotton obscure heaven. We become inured to darkness, noise the soul’s void. But now the wrench of its letting go makes air shrill.

Dara: comes from the Gaelic dair, an oak

iii. Writing Home It was hope we had then that aching night. A cold wind driving us. Watching the lights go out, and the land. My man’s arm a comfort: See, Sarah, it’s still there. Our hearts singing and breaking. Eight months we’d waited on the passage, and every day wasting. Still, Sarah, still. And still it was, looking back night and distance making peace with all we’d left. Moments from our lives looking up at us as if we’d gathered them in small piles. Then dawn, a kindling. Look, Sarah, the sun gettin’ up to let us in! Stepping off with a lurch of the heart. So many fine buildings all of them black. Soot everywhere, from tall chimneys that cut off heaven. Our room never saw the day. The child came early. A poor little thing she was and my milk dry. I took it hard then. His arm never left me. I’m sorry, Sarah, he fumbled as if loving was the evil. The joy had gone out of me. I’m on my own now

and weak for the work. They don’t welcome us here. Sure who’d blame them? It’s little enough they have. I wash their corpses lay them out. Glad sometimes for the quiet company. I miss friends.

iv. Memory we huddle round timid with loss re-live departures how a boat trailed a slow finger, left the shore desolate we disembark at dawn the journey is yet to make

v. Mary Murriherty Times, she thought it real: the folding in of dark; the almost-silence before the houses rose, coughing and wheezing; the comfort of her imagined room where walls retained their plaster, were bright and trusting; and on a shelf a book she might take down a moment contemplate the secret flow of lines, the whist of leaves turning. Beyond the dwellings, the lane drew itself up as if it would take a deep breath, then off with it downhill in slides and panics. Sometimes the feet larruping puddles imagined a scuff of daisies, a breeze feathered with canach. She paused where the lane cobbled to Drapery, Apothecary, Haberdashery: words to shade dressed windows, their blinds half drawn, demure for Sunday. In the emptied flower window a single petal, pale as if light drained it. In the morning someone would brush it away, a delicate unwanted thing she might revive a day, then press between dry leaves. The church reeked of damp overcoats, a slow incense from bent backs invoked crucified arms, pale saints troubled by light – something too delicate in an upturned face. In Nomine Patris et Filii… The seoithín of Latin prayer a cradling for her thoughts. Emitte lucem tuam… She wondered if God spoke. Or was He just a quiet? The silence she imagined in the early room, the book she could not read – strokes shaping and merging. Éist! Éist! And God spoke to Mary Murriherty: Blessed the poor they shall see God. Blessed the meek, they shall be called children of God. Blessed the persecuted… Outside, rain. His breakfast late. Already she feels the blow anger pinning her to the stunned wall, the harangue of fist. But when it comes, hard to her stomach, the pain’s delayed holds off, then bursts from her in a violent flood. Slumped over the sag of an arm, she watches how it eddies in little runs and knots, dissolves and is absorbed, the wet mud taking it into itself, slowly, completely – as she imagines love. canach: cotton grass, bog cotton seoithín: seoithín seotho, lullaby Éist: Listen 62

vi. Béarla Our thoughts are stones small pebbles picked up on a childhood beach we finger in the dark. They weigh heavy now soft vowels that disposed the lips’ blessings dispose the soul’s silence. Words we are slow to learn stammer like chains.

Béarla: the English language

vii. Muiréad Mary they call me a meek name for a handmaiden; rechristen me in mild water cleanse the seditious tongue. When Dara calls I see them flinch as if a hand dipped in the holy font. “Patience is the armour of the strong,” Dara says. He keeps an acorn in a drawer whispers in the night, “Mo grá thú.” A breath, a mountain spring finding me naked. I rise like a warrior open to his thrust, dochloíte. “O mo Mhuiréad! Mo grá Thú.” The forbidden tongue licking my soul like flame, like balm.

Mo grá thú: You are my love dochloíte: invincible

FOUR

IN MEMORY Sheila Marie Body (1939 – 2010)

EYING THE RESERVATION i. High Peak High wind. Always that blast of cold; raw dawn unleashing you up the maw of the hill your voice ahead like a toddler racing and falling. Always too much to remark. But silence could surprise you: the inexpressible stalling, somewhere between the gesture and the word. Below us, cats eyes of early risers define narrow lanes. A lantern limps to a field where a steaming lamb is slapped by cold. Was it here we saw that large bird being driven backward on the wind? Its huge wings no more than a weakening protest. It troubled you thenâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; with hindsight we read portents. Now strapped in your Health Trust chair wrapped in a trinity of shawls you feel the cold, resolutely watch the play of early light how shadows too effect transformations.

ii. Eying the Reservation Once upon a blue, blue moon coming out of the fog… Humour insisting the YOU mocking morphine dreams: the menagerie of acrobats dancers, Edwardian choirboys light blue as a Madonna. “Just now it was you on TV.” “Busy I am!” “You smiled.” Through a sleepless night it flickers like a sanctuary. We half-watch documentaries time-fillers, nonsense a gavotte of strutting birds. But a word can turn it round leave the moment raw. When the spasm strikes language fractures, rips like a nerve, dissociates. Re-forms between clenched teeth. Childlike supplications you repeat and repeat, stack like sandbags breach when you move. You totter, weep, rail– a gibbering vortex rounds on itself, whips a fierce victory. “Geronimo!” you shout and would slap your rump if an arm complied, riding the air from a Saturday matinee– No longer a savage the dignified old man leading his bewildered people to a land could not sustain them. 68

iii. Dawn Even at this high Summer it comes late roused from some brief valley dalliance drags recalcitrant feet through an Aintree of continents, the pit of dreams. Or arcing over the scarp, steps back a moment for a world that daily remakes itself out of the dark – Are we too reborn memory wiped clean, reincarnating from the ashes or the dust? And if in that other time we meet, shall I know you, or not knowing be drawn by some prior compulsion? Will we then be carefree, climb a hill on a slow day, breathless? Will our love be tested? Thoughts I play with like pieces on a board. I have no desire for other times, other selves, love you now want you well. Through endless nights embrace your pain, or wearying by this window count the shades of dark. I’m a dispenser of dreams: the innocuous pea-green capsule that transports you to Narnia. A circus has come out of the wardrobe. You gasp and smile at feats for your eyes only. But flight is brief. You touch down confused scan familiar objects with mild disbelief your arms around your pain like a poultice; mine around them and you, as if together we hold her, not you, wife, but this other (tormented offspring of our troubled love) we hold now with transcendent tenderness this numinous joy…

iv. Azaleas How beautiful! the pinks, the reds, the whites. The mauve and white on a single stem you liked best, not yet in flower. Small buds crowd like children gathering for a stroll. They stroll across our years together, blocks of time we measure in silver, pearl, ruby as if we mark longevity. Yet but a minute back you looked up seventeen, crossed a dance floor. I expect you among flowers engrossed in some deep satisfaction or dozing over histories that curl slowly in the sun. Your absence leaves the house cluttered: scraps of paper that fail to remind you; a table by the window, sectioned with correspondence; the groan of books; pens everywhere, uncapped; precisely angled chairs, each a repository, they’d wait on you all day, not weigh constancy. This, the life you wrung from disability now with a loss of sight, like the other, taken. The long awaited medication deemed the only light, has put out light– prayer slapped back in the face. Absently, I take your bell sound a room’s distress.

v. Cold As if language leaves you or might not countenance raw dependence you regress to a child’s morse, tic-tac a plaintive dit dit dit. Today a single word is between you and silence: “Cold,” you say, “cold.” Cold on hills the rags of snow, like shorn lambs or torn shrouds on winter trees. A tracery of invocations, a seeking prayer; iced-breaths founder in dense air. O my valiant one it is love sustains us craves in the ravaged bone the useless arms aching to hold.

vi. Seeing Such Stillness. Waiting on your breath that teases like an unreliable memory. Already you are far from us. Suddenly you almost rise, look up. What in that intense wide-eyed moment you saw we cannot know, only that it absorbed you.

vii. Chapel of Rest Through double Georgian doors like entering a wardrobe where you are neatly stored. Such uncharacteristic tidiness. No dog-eared books or rustling notes to engage those sacrificial hands or dog my un-sleep, the tenuous protracted movements Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d come to expect. But how expect you to rest with such unclutter? Why do I think you breathe see your breast move? Languid as if love might wake you. And what do I do here? Is there a ritual to observe? Touch? Mouth words? All our words are said all scrabbling in my brain. How unforgiving our failures now. I empty into the emptiness: this chapelled room, the rows of perfect chairs, discreet tissues blanked windows. The standing lid neatly labelled, as you would have it; your chaos always organised, a paper trail you pinned on doors. I smile at your red socks, how Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve turned you out. Take your hand to no purpose. In your dying I held it, but not tightly for those gnarled fingers might still feel pain, flinch, repel; beyond the hurt, hurt. Your head is uncomfortable let me fix your pillow. 73

viii. Three Months Later – Dinas Dinlle The prostrate hills. Mist being drawn aside like veils from a tabernacle. A dense stillness poised on expectation: morning at prayer not with words but a breath’s intake. I have mislaid joy labour words, darknesses thrown shadows diligently search the water’s edge for some vestige retained by a place you loved; or glimpse you far off a speck at the world’s edge turning; or alone on some winter strand cupped hands cradling exhausted waves exhilarated… Suddenly, that brush of ice an errant wind a breath grown chill.

ix. Aftermath Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m returning from hope. Travelling back to a depleted yesterday; the cold colder, the dark darker. No sense now where roads may lead. Severe weather warning. Gales strip trees to famished bones; the rain-pooled fields like failed endeavours, abandoned dreams bound with scraps of snow. Alone in this crowded train I watch how all things drift drift and shed their being. Cast out by light, my winter image struggles to keep pace, tenacious as if driven by despair or some unquenchable hope. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m returning from hope: the cold colder the dark darker. Keen as a lance for a blood-letting that never did heal or assuage pain, memory lances the tender sealed-over spot: your whole being would light with my return. If memory could be expectation, I would sing.

NATIVITY why is this night different from all others as if the stillness conjures it or some unacknowledged loss an ancient voice deep and sonorous somewhere between question and affirmation why is this night a wrong note harmony so right it silences rising in the bone, the hulk, the killing field fills the night with forgiveness why is this night different because promises were made and seen to be kept the blood of the lamb barring death from the dwellings of Jews dressed for a journey– by OÚwi™cim’s abandoned track how still the candles flame a choir of exclamations singular as stars why is this night different from all others answers with its repetition an ineluctable why rends the still air with lamentation wonder in the mind a place for wings

SEÁN BODY A Biographical Note

Born in Templeglantine, Co Limerick, Seán Body has lived most of his adult life in the Greater Manchester area, working as an accounts clerk prior to training as a probation officer. He transferred from Manchester Probation Service with the implementation of the 1969 Children Act, to the newly formed Social Services Department, where he undertook a variety of roles, including management and training. Subsequently he ran his own training agency, specialising in child care. He joined Manchester Poets in 1988, where he became a Director, establishing Tarantula as a Manchester Poets imprint, and taking responsibility for publicity and publications. He helped to organise monthly Readings, special events and to conduct monthly Workshops. He was also a founder member of Manchester Irish Writers, where he contributed to and participated in similar events, including organising special events, in Gaelic and English for The Manchester Irish Festival. In 1998 he reconstituted Tarantula Publications as an independent publisher and launched the thrice yearly magazine Brando’s Hat. His poetry has won prizes in several competitions, including, Ver Poets, Peterloo and Bridport (3 years running). A short story won the Irish Post Listowel Writers Competition. Throughout the last decade, family illness has forced him to curtail his activities. He now lives in Cheshire. Seán Body’s first full collection, Witness, was published by Tarantula Publications (1995/8) and re-published in a revised and expanded edition by Lapwing Publications (2013). This is his second Lapwing collection.

www.seanbody.co.uk

L A P W I N G PUB L I C A T I O N S

SEÁN BODY

Seán Body's new collection of poems cultivates a powerful sense of presence and loss. It is composed of striking individual pieces and of sequences where the space between utterance echoes with significance and possibility. These elegiac poems record a migrant energy and hope, reverberating with the Irish language and its accommodations with English, with the dreams, exigencies and longing of a diasporic people – and ultimately with the effort to understand and re-integrate a scattered self. But in registering loss they also restore, resurrect, enact and make good an essential love and vitality, as adept at ventriloquising characters as at evoking place, moments and history. His language is its own unsentimental and sensual music: rich, compassionate and precise. His touch is light, his realisations tentative as farewell gestures. These are beautiful and moving poems and he is an astonishingly good poet who deserves to be much more widely known. Graham Mort The only poet I know who has passed through Inferno and reached a tranquil world born of years of agony. Every word he writes, and not one out of place, is charged with the pain or joy of vivid memories and raw experience. We do not see Seán Body's striking world of people and places as through a window; he takes us by the hand and walks with us there. The spirit of a gently smiling Celtic elf-giant gleams through the precise and simple imagery of his poetry – a masterly crafted depiction of closely observed modern reality tinged with occasional glimpses of Irish folk-lore. Gavin Bantock Seán Body is a quiet, tender poet with an unerring ability to put his finger on just the right word. The poems in Shouldering Back The Day offer the solace of memory set against the sadness of parting and loss. Angela Topping The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore – so it has been written – indicative of hope. Printed by Kestrel Print Hand-bound at the Winepress, Ireland

ISBN 978-1-909252-31-8 £10.00