One Poem by Marguerite Doyle

 

The Last Inventory in the House of the Magdalenes 

 

We wore our hard hats, and followed orders and the foreman’s

broad shrug onto the debris field. The corrugated skirt

of the sheet-metal door groaned under his weight and we slipped

into the dark. In the single-bulb gloom of the cavernous hall

we paused beneath signs of attrition and the Virgin’s stone halo.

Blueprints lay strewn on the floor. Sledgehammers and saws,

a prepacked egg sandwich, spirit-levels to even out a new aspect

on the world. We descended the steps, treading our way along

damp corridors and the tight-lipped catacombs. In the labyrinth’s

rib we worked quietly, whispering as we filtered and combed

and sifted. We were the reclaimers of forbidden things; the women

who came to mark down in neat ledgers the items of a life—

her kiss-lock bag, fragments of a letter from her mother, old Kodak

photographs of a family outing to the park. Our arms could not

bear the load, how precious they were. Not relics or artefacts,

but the umbilical threads of her essence gleaned from the vaults.

Later, we walked through rooms; doors gaped on the edge,

webs brushed our faces, ceiling fittings dripped stalactites. In fear

of shock we paused at windows to look past the bars, to glimpse

the women who never left the laundry’s boundary. We came back

on shards of glass into a nimbus of pure sunlight, cradling

the echoes of the women, who they used to be, like babes in arms. 

 

Note: The last Magdalene Laundry, where unmarried mothers in Ireland were incarcerated, closed in 1996.

Marguerite Doyle is a Best of the Net Nominated Poet and holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Dublin City University. Her poems have been published in Vallum, Reliquiae Journal, The Seventh Quarry, The Galway Review, The New Welsh Reader, Dreich and previously in Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Marguerite’s poetry also appears in the Dedalus Anthology, Local Wonders: Poems of Our Immediate Surrounds and The Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology, Hold Open the Door. She has been Winner in Category for the Trócaire / Poetry Ireland Competition and was both shortlisted and highly commended for the Anthology Poetry Award. In 2024 she was winner of the Poets Meet Painters International Poetry Competition, as part of Kenmare Arts Festival, Co. Kerry, Ireland.