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.