Saturday, March 19, 2016

Loneliness


At One End Of A Bench.

 

At one end of a bench

an old man wearing Winter clothes

regards the fountains and Summer

through melt-water irises.
 
He needs my ear to be a conch
 

so that he can call to the past
 
down these auditory canals.

And when he calls, his wife and son
 
will resurrect, return, reverse
 
like filings into a family.
 

It is mid-morning in Stephen's Green;

the usual sounds: clacking fowl
 
and fountain symphonies, and beyond

the thrash of traffic and voices. 

In that moment: two strangers on a bench
 
 
are travelling backwards to Mayo;

elsewhere a beggar has recreated himself
 
in a bank window and somewhere,  in a kitchen,
 
a woman is conversing though the voice
 
that answers has not been heard for years.

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