The light, tarred skin

of the curragh rides

and receives the current,

rolls and responds to

the harsh sea swell.

Inside its wooden ribs

a slithering frenzy; a sheen

of black-barred silver-

green and flailing mackerel:

the iridescent hoop

of a gasping sea trout.

As a fish gleams most

fiercely before it dies,

so the scales of the sea-hag

shine with a hectic

putrescent glitter:

Luminous, bleached-

white water–

that light in the narrows

before a storm breaks.

Hermit

The night structures swarm-

ing around this attic room,

a silver trellis of stars,

tide wash, then silence.

Stir and creak of the fire,

an ikon bright on the wall,

and, of course, books, papers,

hosts of silent dialogue.

To work intently while

the constellations shift

across the frost-sharp sky,

moisture condenses on the glass.

Autumn yielding to winter,

Pegasus to the Hunter,

one year into another,

endless death, ceaseless birth

While ships toil up the channel,

patient as the night prowl

of the owl, or probing heron;

the snail progress of a poem.

Intellect and universe

held briefly in tune,

under the blanched helm

of the cliff lighthouse

Upright and defiant

against the night,

a restless arm of light

shearing the dark.

Family Rosary

The rasp and scrape of wood on stone.

We kneel in a circle of chairs.

Aunt Brigid’s has a broken frame,

Aunt Freda steadies a rocker’s crescent.

I scuff the arm of a threadbare armchair.

As the steady drone deepens,

Hail Mary dissolving into Holy Mary,

I bury my head in the musty cushions,

Tease their tassels in boyish boredom

Until Aunt Brigid leads the final prayers,

A voice raised against the night,

Assuming response, numbering the dead

With claim on these frail living

Who sigh in their separate reveries

Of Sorrowful and Joyful mysteries

While the beads glide through fingers–

Grain sliding from a sack.

And the walls fade and change,

The lights dwindle under the holy picture

With its soft pierced hands;

The fire is sucked up the chimney,

The traffic swallows the road.

Last Court

Poetry, ’tis a court of judgement upon the soul.

–Henrik Ibsen

I

Non piangere

From your last chair,

two months before that glutton, cancer,

devoured you, lawyer brother,

you gave me a final wigging, read the riot act,

as if I were some juvenile delinquent

hauled before the magistrate.

This sun-warm conservatory,

latest addition to your ultra-modern bungalow

overlooking Brown-Lecky’s estate,

(now manicured golf course) recalls the deck

of that Cunard liner, the Cameronia,

which, ages ago, shipped us boys to Fintona.

Home again, in mid-Tyrone,

you built your now fading life,

fathering a tribe within a tribe,

only to chide me now, for my ‘great mistake,

repeated, twice’, of choosing a bride

from the wider world outside.

‘They don’t understand. You need somebody

who think like you, shares your beliefs.’

Mildly, I place a picture of your two nieces,

(my Cork-born, Irish-French-Jewish),

Church of Ireland-christened children)

upon your knee, for loving avuncular scrutiny.

But you shrug it away,

and having pronounced your last verdict,

stalk off to rest, dying, but striding with dignity,

without a whimper of self-pity,

through your assembled family,

your last gift, this fragile bravery.

II

To leave me forever, with your disapproval,

not fraternal love, and a contradictory testimony,

‘Strangely, I have never felt so happy, as now,

giving up, letting go, floating free.’

You look down, ruefully, at your glass

Of burnished Black Bush whiskey.

‘And no, I no longer pray,

although I talk to God sometimes in my head

and our parents. Why did you hurt our mother’s pride

with your mournful auld poem, The Dead Kingdom?

Only a child, you couldn’t understand their decision:

Besides, you got the details wrong!’

‘So you believe we’ll see them again?

Bone-light, transfigured, Molly and Jim,

angels dancing upon a pin, and then

I can take it up with them again?’

‘No,’ you say stubbornly, ‘Never again,’

shaking your once-red Ulster head.

And plucking your pallid, freckled arm.

‘I don’t believe,’ you proclaim,

‘in the body’s Resurrection.

See how the flesh wastes parchment-thin?’

Yet, resigned as the Dying Gaul,

stoic as an ancient Roman.

III

Un grido lacerante

Dear freckled brother, in an old photo,

you throw your arm around me

in a Brooklyn park, your impulse to hug

preserved there for posterity.

Let me reverse our roles, carefully as I can,

to encircle you, this time, with my arm.

In far off Florence, I learnt of your death;

Evelyn calling from a rain-swept West Cork.

‘It was a merciful release,’ that cliché–yet true:

‘But how can I trek all that way North?

My sister’s children are here, as well as our own.

It’s a long hard drive up to County Tyrone.’

Phone to my ear, gazing out at the Arno

I hear, behind her, the laughter of children,

Those nieces whose picture you had scorned,

Cherish the living, while honouring the dead,

I’ll stand over that, though it fall on my head,

The church bells of Florence will bless him instead.

As many mourners assemble to your funeral

in our chill and distant Northern chapel,

since you loved paintings I patrol

the Pitti, the Uffizi, turning from

a foam-borne Botticelli numph, or

grave Madonna, to weep above Dante’s city.

Sharp-tempered, once you smashed me to the floor

in our mother’s kitchen, and standing over

me, like some American boxer, ‘Rise

and fight like a man,’ (and I only sixteen)!

Aproned Molly hovering, a hapless referee;

you stalk away, to return with a brusque apology.

Quick-tempered but kindly, you drove

your poet brother home from Dublin,

emptying my squalid flat without reproach.

Later, wives and lives came between us,

differing codes of conduct and belief.

Yet I still glimpse your ginger hair and freckle face.

Long before the cancer struck, I saw that face

grown ashen, fissured as chalk, suddenly old

as though some secret source had parched,

and sought to tell you, Relax again,

as when you roamed Bundoran with the Fintona gang.

But tact forbade. Or cowardice!

Now, hear my plea. Sweet-souled Santayana

might have agreed with you, brother, about exogamy,

but against your patriarchal views,

I assert the right of love to choose,

from whatever race, or place. And of verse

to allay, to heal, our tribal curse, our narrowness.