51% British:
Writing the troubles out of my head
Brogues
The land cries
When God painted Ireland,
He used watercolours,
Smudging the dun, sodden landscape
With occasional sunshine.
This wringing wet romance
Seeps down through quiet churchyards
Feeding lonely streams where soldiers drank
And scanned heather ridges riddled
With the possibility of concealment
And sudden death
I looked down at Lough Erne
Through the shining, murderous hillocks
Is that where all this water goes?
Washing the clay clean to Enniskillen.
It's a pity spilled blood
Can't be got rid of as quickly.
Daddy's brogues sat in a corner
Freshly painted with Oxblood
He wore them like statements
Well heeled. Solid. Tough
But I saw violence in their thick, pitted skins
With the tips glittering like gypsies teeth
They were like big, ignorant dogs
Better left outdoors
They stayed their ground, though
And growled at Daddy's slippers.
A swift slap on its tin backside
And a new loaf is delivered
On the scullery table
My mother, the creator
Having swaddled it in dishcloths
Murders it swiftly with her knife
Releasing the hot, sour breath
So redolent of childhood
I love the way new bread
Sucks butter off the blade
And stops time in a country kitchen
This is now a feral place -
Once implacable, lately humbled,
The writ of law over ruled
By an ordinance of nature,
The roll of honour was unscrewed
The portals welded,
The armour sold for scrap
And all then supplanted:
Fushia, escallonia, hebes and whitethorn -
A lush and careless memorial:
Climbing the blast walls, lacing the wire,
Embracing cameras bowed and blind.
You could pull it all down tomorrow,
But you'd never settle accounts
As well as bindweed, couch grass, mares tail,
Swaddling this infant void
In gorgeous ruin.
Wheaten
Closed border barracks 2009
Poems 4