Hats On for the Happy We couldn’t go in person since the car had grown moss inside. So we sat on Zoom in Birmingham, between a Dublin screen and one in the south of Chicago. We were silent, serious. Our separated frames fused to witness the in-person rejection of otherlessness. Two Canadians entered the gallery, … Read more
Calling All Angels Leaves fall like secret prayers— calling all angels September’s having her best orgasm in a century. Everything lingers in climax, the character of the light, earthy fragrances, a whole heaving calendar week with an arched spine. Here’s how I know the world is ill and absurd: a dead fawn stares up from … Read more
Holy Hay I didn’t have a chance to show you the sainfoin I sowed back in May, remembering our holiday in Spain where we kept seeing it in bloom by the road and on waste ground, covering whole hillsides, great cerise stains of what we later learned was Holy Hay. Back here I bought some … Read more
In normal times Mary used to catch glimpses of the dancers. On his cigarette break from his work in the galley he had started to station himself on the promenade deck outside the large porthole with its closed ruched curtains and watch snatches of “rehearsal”. That was a new word for him. Amongst the many … Read more
THEY HAVE GAINED AN AUDIENCE with the divine. The plumbline is vertical as the resulting verse, so that neither agony nor ecstasy travel horizontally but curl and rise, sweet smoke from the swung thurible. Perhaps these are the only prophets left to us, still able to loop the loose thread of heaven through earth’s needle-eye, … Read more
THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR Lucky gull chicks on a city roof take food from their parents and snuggle for warmth; for them, life has begun as well as it could. The flightless chick who fell from its nest above and is abandoned by its parents on a hostile gull family’s roof is shut … Read more
Then the fairy spread her wings and flew off. People came from far and wide to hear the tale of their adventures, and when it was told, they grew up loving and loved, with the fairies for their friends and protectors, ever ready to help them if they were in trouble; in time they were … Read more
The Vagabond J.M. Synge, 1871-1909 To comprehend, regard the brutal wilderness to hand. More than most, the burrow-broken vagabonds recall the living tune. In remoter reaches of the Wicklow hills, they live where a sodden soul could barely pass, and look out all the year on unimpeded barriers of heath. In every season, heavy sleets … Read more
And Not Your Garments Lord, Lord this my heart full of secrets, seeds I know you did not send—Lord, I cannot rend. If I am choked, therefore, by weeds, I will not ask for a mended garden, I won’t beg your holy pardon at scythe’s end. These were difficult to bury, so little loam left … Read more
In February Anne faced the days with her usual shaky stoicism. She opened the curtains to cold stunted mornings glimmering through the window and at the bottom of the park the pathetic trees. At lunchtime Ryan’s was full of the office crowd so she went at three when she only had a couple of old … Read more