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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