At one end of a bench
an old man wearing Winter
clothes
regards the fountains and
Summer
through melt-water irises.
This man 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 sons 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,
outside the thrash of
traffic and voices.
In a moment:
two strangers on a bench
are traveling backwards to Mayo;
elsewhere a beggar has recreated
himself in a bank window
and somewhere, busy in a
kitchen, a woman is conversing
though the voice that
answers has not been heard for years.
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