Stepping on to it across the gap,

On to the carriage metal, I reached to grab

The stubby black roof-wort and take my stand

From planted ball of heel to heel of hand

As sweet traction and heavy down-slump stayed me.

I was on my way, well girded, yet on edge,

Spot-rooted, buoyed, aloof,

Listening to the dwindling noises off,

My back to the unclosed door, the platform empty;

And wished it could have lasted,

That long between-times pause before the budge

And glaze-over, when any forwardness

Was unwelcome and bodies readjusted,

Blindsided to themselves and other bodies.

*

So deeper into it, crowd-swept, strap-hanging,

My lofted arm a-swivel like a flail,

My father’s glazed face in my own waning

And craning …

Again the growl

Of shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble

Of iron on iron, then a long centrifugal

Haulage of speed through every dragging socket.

And so by night and day to be transported

Through galleried earth with them, the only relict

Of all that I belonged to, hurtled forward,

Reflecting in a window mirror-backed

By blasted weeping rock-walls.

Flicker-lit.

Midnight Anvil

If I wasn’t there

When Barney Devlin hammered

The midnight anvil

I can still hear it: twelve blows

Struck for the millennium.

*

His nephew heard it

In Edmonton, Alberta:

The cellular phone

Held high as a horse’s ear,

Barney smiling to himself.

*

Afterwards I thought

Church bels beyond the starres heard

And then imagined

Barney putting it to me:

‘You’ll maybe write a poem.’

*

What I’ll do instead

Is quote those waterburning

Medieval smiths:

‘Huf, puf! Lus, bus! Col!’ Such noise

On nights heard no one never.

*

And Eoghan Rua

Asking Séamus MacGearailt

To forge him a spade

Sharp, well shaped from the anvil,

And ringing sweet as a bell.

The Lift

A first green braird: the hawthorn half in leaf.

Her funeral filled the road

And could have stepped from some old photograph

Of a Breton pardon, remote

Familiar women and men in caps

Walking four abreast, soon falling quiet.

Then came the throttle and articulated whops

Of a helicopter crossing, and afterwards

Awareness of the sound of our own footsteps,

Of open air, and the life behind those words

‘Open’ and ‘air’. I remembered her aghast,

Foetal, shaking, sweating, shrunk, wet-haired,

A beaten breath, a misting mask, the flash

Of one wild glance, like ghost surveillance

From behind a gleam of helicopter glass.

A lifetime, then the deathtime: reticence

Keeping us together when together,

All declaration deemed outspokenness.

Favourite aunt, good sister, faithful daughter,

Delicate since childhood, tough alloy

Of disapproval, kindness and hauteur,

She took the risk, at last, of certain joys –

Her birdtable and jubilating birds,

The ‘fashion’ in her wardrobe and her tallboy.

Weather, in the end, would say our say.

Reprise of griefs in summer’s clearest mornings,

Children’s deaths in snowdrops and the may,