She holds her child in her hands,
barely more than a basket of bones light as twigs.
I see the anguish in her face, and try to imagine
the weight of my starving child on my hands
but cannot; I cannot bear to put my child’s face
on that emaciated body.
I will not bear her suffering, not even in imagination;
maybe that is why such horrors persist.
Each discovery opens the door
To a room more empty.
Converging to a point,
and it bugle-shaped to infinity.
Stars make space in my head.
Standing flying,
The universe without within;
Minute, infinite
I.
Full sails once,
bulging with summer sunlight;
we would have gathered them in, eyes.
Geometries of whitened stone:
disused warehouses;
midday has lain down,
stretched out, listless beneath the walls.
Water that is lapping against the quay-side,
speak up;
what is the history of this place?
Part river:
play of current on bronzed pebble-beds,
sweet.
Part stone:
tapping waters in the sound boxes beneath boulders,
their back-beat.
Part waterweed:
the choir’s descants ascend to high C,
the shape of it.
Sopping fields
green with water,
lush drumlins
sluicing November rain
down their soused sumps,
spewing stone-coloured cloudscapes
onto the road,
coughing up sozzled fences
from beer-brown drains
to hobble under their load of time
tunelessly
into winter’s torpor.
Having arrived at my conclusion,
I embark upon a contemplation
of the issues.
Since there is nothing to consider,
I mull over them
and reach the decision
that my ruminations are futile,
that I have already fixed
on a resolution
and that considerable forethought
will be necessary
for the solution I require.
His face, a withering peach dried of happiness;
cares relentlessly tapping at his temples;
years spent yanking a livelihood from obstinate fields.
Still that skulking alertness, a hunger behind his eyes;
trigger-fast assessments, critical, begrudging;
observing the world with a lead-shot gaze.
The exertions of neighbours stored, bones for picking over
through interminable nights; nights that stack,
block upon block, building building hatred.
Let’s say, I was to walk out in public bent into this shape:
it would be concluded that I was a half-wit;
from posture alone!
And let’s say my hair is unkempt and
I’m wearing a big black overcoat, hanging open;
people would cross the road.
If, on the other hand, I retrieve a kitten from the depths of the coat:
they’ll consider me harmless, away in the head,
still better avoided.
And, with all of that, if I appear to be perfectly happy in myself,
I’ll be discounted as a pitiful poor soul,
hopelessly adrift from reality.
The house is a box.
I live in it,
like my skull,
among my things,
navigation markers
of my everyday.
Beyond the windows
chaos,
beautiful, daunting;
I gaze out,
make plans to negotiate it;
it stares back.
You, in stillness at the kitchen table,
in a melancholy slant of evening light,
gazing past the tableware
at life.
In that moment,
how monumental the tea things;
how infinitely small you;
how brittle life.
I'm looking forward to sharing a launching event with Caoimhin MacAoidh at this year's Allingham Festival. I'll be launching 'The Sound of Water Searching' and Caoimhin will be launching ‘Between the Jigs and the Reels’; a book, originally published in 1994, that has been out of print for a number of years. The event is part of the Allingham Festival in Ballyshannon and takes place on Nov. 6th in the Abbey Arts Centre at 2pm. Booker Prize nominee, Claire Keegan will be in conversation with Sinead Crowley following this event
Sometimes the sky runs through you:
a light-saturated blue, streamers of white cloud.
I’ve admired your free spirit, envied your lightness,
and tugged at my mooring ropes but found them firm.
No doubt, this vision of you reflects intangibility:
I may as well be grabbing at falling snow.
But still, I tell myself, that all I can be and all I can know
is extracted on the threshing floor of my mind.
