The Happy Song of Us Okay to buy your grandchild an ice-cream. Illegal for them to lick it. Fine to bake granny a gleaming fruit cake, as long as you only email her a high resolution photo of it. Okay to give your son or daughter a bright new football. Illegal for them to kick … Read more
Fisheye I, smudge in the eyescape of others, As my trowel lodges in mulch, Palm-sore, snuggle the quiet bulbs Into the trickling earth which inhumes us, While these, artfully coned, only swoon To consecrate a humble bloom. The sun paints everslant shadows all day In this great sphere of transition Centring nowhere, where I witness … Read more
Christmas Snow Never came that year, and yet It came in other ways, remembering the Light; As suds frothing in the Garavogue Around bridge arches, a scuttled trolley; It fell from lamps in Henry Street Illuminating tracer-lines of sleet And shoppers gripping rods of sleek umbrellas As if playing giant straining fish; It fell as … Read more
Assembly One morning during the first week of Advent, _ When I was possessed, After a birthday’s dark exhilarations, _ By a terrible kind of nervousness, We saw, on stage, the judgement of our son, Before his class, the Egyptian pantheon. I was chosen, he said, to be mummified today: _ My life was cut … Read more
Taking advantage of their last night in the city, Boris and Semyon went to a theatre, something neither of them had done since childhood. But as luck would have it, at some point during the show, Boris’s wallet was stolen. He was upset, and more so when the police officers exchanged glances before giving him … Read more
Our Posh Liberal Friends for Susan Whenever I show them the Future, they refuse it; say: this future has bad hair, waves its arms around too much, is too Jewish, or not Jewish enough, too not-a-woman, or the wrong sort of woman. This Future has a face that one day might raise the corporate tax … Read more
Everyone was amazed when it happened and I mean everyone, including Jeffrey. For weeks now Ramona had been hanging around in “Murphy’s,” a pub in Nice where, every Wednesday night, they held an open mike. A real beauty, with auburn hair and glittering eyes, she brought her violin with her, and when she played, there … Read more
‘They sang Cuban love-songs and moonsweet madigrals and selections from the best and finest of Italian opera’. Flann O’Brien At Swim-Two-Birds Edited by Ronan Sheehan under the imprint of Cassandra Voices, Cuban Love Songs is a joint effort of the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba (UNEAC) and a variety of Irish writers and poets, … Read more
Presidential When you finish reading this poem, you’ll remember only the Black Forest Gateaux I bought you once. I had no option but to vote for that tax on women’s shoes but greatly admired the fight you put up against it; have kept all the press cuttings, especially those that took care not to mention … Read more
Most Saturdays they stood outside the GPO in Dublin. People holding signs bearing slogans both contradictory and confused. “Fake Covid Virus.” “RTE IS the Virus.” “End Barbaric Halal Slaughter.” “Our Irish Catholic Heritage is Under Attack.” “End the Paedophile Cabal.” Weren’t many of them. Sixty maybe. Not enough to be taken seriously. No real threat. … Read more