The Lake is a Mirror : County Mayo 1983
For John Joe Doyle
Westport and Kildare Town
Reticent Celtic dusk,
maker of whirlpool, ripple, weedy borderline inflamed -
we greet your sky, pressing our diffident shapes between,
body of water, body of child, woman, and man
in a triptych illusion of mortal land-lubbers
who trap an innocent calendar between - your Celtic dusk,
your fire-haunted mountain, the cold-lips of a water-spiced western sky,
another chieftain's rain plunking down, sneakiest of those that fuse these ripples…
I dreamed I’d enter these waters,
baptised, intrigued, tasting that inflamed edge,
so my script from a satellite of tomorrow
made this dream a kaleidoscope
“They Are the Glue That Holds Us All Together…”
Nowhere in the sparkles of my thoughts
did I seek your love
or build a road you'd judge strangers' jellied bodies on,
apart from insect-shapes of shadows' days
people who fell from your stomach
gave darkness a chance to steal their passports from,
centuries whispered in your teeth
I've, quite recently, brought my dangling hours back from -
rewinding and rewinding,
I find the speech that sparked the sulphur
that made me peer into the fires,
where you and your rifle-stench matrimonial garbs
still pray you'll get closure from,
weaving stolen wedding gowns
in the grooves of your sucklings'
shallow majesties.
You are the glue that holds this empire together,
rabbit-tooth Queen Victoria,
hunting for your Bertie's whereabouts
around the crunching sod of the moon-bleached backwoods,
stench of shotgun smoke
and waft of pornographic liquor,
and boys you combed through hairs of gold
preaching to distant kin
of stop-signs
at leaf-drooping crossroads - alphabets’ angry little Judas, stiff as bells of death
Raheny, Monday : 12:06am
Luminous luscious white
and the smiling moon
and the reckless freckled neon.
Midnight makes its canals
on the terrain of my palms,
a fox's eyes swaps a firefly's
lightning bolt,
to become the final line in my memories of that moment
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