You sang along
To a song on the radio –
it was old, vintage stuff
nineteen sixties, I presume
the melody lingered in my head
as I ploughed through
City Hall records
pruning branches on my family tree.
Poems
The Micks
Have you ever met ‘the Micks’, me lads, when wandering round the town,
They are the crowd of Irishmen, whose fame is all renown.
There’s Alexander, Mungo Park and Michael Vernon too,
But these names I state to you, me lads, are merely just a few.
Inniskeen Road: July Evening
The bicycles go by in twos and threes –
There’s a dance in Billy Brennan’s barn tonight,
And there’s the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Kerr’s Ass: Kavanagh
To go to
Brought him home the evening before the market
An exile that night in Mucker.
Art McCooey: [Kavanagh]
I must appeal to proper Kavanagh scholars who may explain why the poet dedicated the following to his predecessor poet of our region, Art McCooey. The collection ‘A Soul for
The scar
There’s not a chance now that I might recover
one syllable of what that sick man said,
tapping upon my great-grandmother’s shutter,
and begging, I was told, a piece of bread;
Fairy Thresher
That winter night round the blazing turf,
The children on the hobs, the talk ran on
Most from the farmer and his sister Kitty
His wife not holding much with superstitions,
To rhyme and ramble through familiar stories
Of ghosts and fairies, witches, blinks and spells.
On Slieve Mor Hill
I sat aloft on Slieve Mor hill
Watched in silence the valley round
Slieve Gullion rising to the sky
The Cowans sweeping to the ground.
Diagonal Steam Trap [end]
When they found out that it was a cod, like
They wouldn’t admit they’d been had!
They built a big plant outside of
Turnin’ out Steam Traps like mad!