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. 

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.