ANGEL OF DEATH
Moscow
1953, the fifth of March,
the
Angel of Death paid two house calls,
the
names of Stalin and Prokofiev in his book.
In
the House of Unions the Agent of the Great Terror reposed.
The
mourning begot such mass, such urgency
the
Angel swooped and reaped a hundred more.
Amid
the chaos, the Maker of Music was man-hauled
through
backstreets against the human tide.
At
his funeral there were thirty souls,
one
for each piano, violin and cello concerto,
his
every ballet, opera, symphony.
VENUS
AND MADONNA
(after
Botticelli)
A comely sand-haired Irish girl
sprung from a cross-roads in Connemara,
she has ditched her jeans and jumper
and her Dunne’s Stores lingerie
to surf naked but demure on a scallop shell.
And while modesty compels the bathers
on Salthill Strand to perform contortions
under wet towels, the gods have sent
a Zephyr and an Aura to blow-dry her ‘til she glows
and Hora, like some flower child of the ’sixties,
shakes out a cloak to welcome her ashore.
Home and dry
and tastefully accoutred for a photo shoot,
flanked by a coterie of wary boys,
she will offer to the little barrel of a cameraman
a stunning, impassive face,
while supporting with equal inattention
the ripe pomegranate and the plump naíonán
who waves at the call of Cheese!
A KEY IN THE LOCK
So quiet I could hear the tick-tock
of the Grandfather
on the kitchen wall
and the click of her key in the lock.
Seems like a scene from a Hitchcock
thriller, all hushed as a feather’s fall,
so quiet I could hear the tick-tock.
No crack in the silence, no knock
or patter of soles down the hall,
just the click of her key in the lock.
This is not some kind of baroque
horror tale to make one’s skin crawl,
so quiet I could hear the tick-tock.
So expect no denouement, no shock,
no plot twist, nothing like that at all,
just the click of her key in the lock.
Just a moment plucked from a stock
of memories scarcely worthy of recall,
so quiet I could hear the tick-tock
and the click of her key in the lock.
IN THE FOREST OF LANGUAGE
At
the end of my 5 km tether,
a
lockdown hostage, a Covid detainee,
I
take refuge in the Forest of Language,
its
foliage English, its roots universal.
Like
Autumn sheddings the words cascade;
by
their accents you can tell them apart.
Ballets
and chauffeurs, cliches and menus,
honour
and chivalry begotten in France.
Spanish
fiestas, flotillas and patios.
Telepathy
and policy nurtured in Greece.
Arabian
alchemy, syrup and saffron,
tariffs
and traffic, magazines, gauze.
Assembled
in Holland, wagons and yachts,
landscapes
and decoys, knapsacks and reefs.
Iranian
caravans, Malaysian bamboos,
karma
from India, kiosks from Turkey.
Piazzas
and cupolas, rockets, volcanoes,
concertos
and cameos Italian designed.
Parasols,
hurricanes, cannibals, grog,
potatoes
and maize from West Indian isles.
Brazilian
cashews, toucans, piranhas.
Mexican
chocolate, tomatoes, coyotes.
Dingos
and wombats from distant Australia,
jumbucks
and billabongs, koalas and swags.
Old
Yiddish glitches, chutzpah and bagels.
Japanese
haiku, emojis, karate.
Scandinavian
windows ransacked and husbanded.
German
hamburgers, seminars, wanderlust.
American
skyscrapers, floozies and gangsters,
junkies
and gimmicks, slapstick, gung-ho.
Colleens
and shebeens homegrown in Ireland,
hooligans,
whiskey, banshees, smithereens.
Blitzing
my skyline, they are singing like birds,
so
I tilt up my face to this deluge of words.
MICHAEL DURACK
Michael
Durack lives in Co. Tipperary, Ireland. His poems have appeared in publications
such as The Blue Nib, Skylight 47, The
Cafe Review, Live Encounters, The Honest Ulsterman and Poetry Ireland Review as well as being broadcast on Irish local
and national radio. With his brother Austin he has recorded two albums of poetry and guitar music, The Secret Chord (2013) and Going Gone (2015.) He is the author of a memoir in prose and
poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (Limerick
Writers Centre 2016) and two poetry
collections, Where It Began (2017)
and Flip Sides (2020), both published
by Revival Press.
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