from the wooden beam – I mean to look through him.

The Mission

You’re on your own and walking down to Ryan’s house and staring

hard at bags of rubbish thrown from cars on the old Dungannon road.

Overnight a revival tent has moored in the field as a rule reserved

for the circus or the vehicles of spectators for the Cookstown 100,

who picnic on the verge and cheer as motorbikes pass by in blurs,

in Doppler roars, and dip at the corner like fins or sails and right

again and disappear. You don’t know what you’re looking for.

You are sitting in the house alone in the unlit living room

with your Uncle Jack’s double-barrelled split-piece shotgun

propped on velvet cushions and fed with scarlet cartridges

and pointing at the hallway, as a panel van revs in the drive

and someone tries forcing the back door. You keep a list

entitled Bastards, and when that spiral jotter’s full you get

another and print with care New Bastards on the cover.

You are dragging loads of turf in white or brightly coloured

fertilizer bags from the outhouse to stack by the coal bunker,

and hear a human rumble coming from that tent tethered

three fields over. Gangs of midges gust and tremor above

the concrete slabs and a muddy lawn. You would like to be

any place else but watching Ryan crying like a little baby

as he stumbles down towards the stage to testify and get saved.

The Workshop

Her turgid sonnets.

His villanelle.

I will have my revenge,

and if I can’t explain

precisely why I

do prefer to circumvent

the course our fathers,

those great nurslings,

drove their exhausted

steeds across, believe me,

something is coming.

Nightly I walk the strand

against the wind

and watch for it.

After Juvenal

Women in Antiquity

At the checkout Cleopatra.

Eyelash. Nailtap.

The Queen of Sheba leaving Tie Rack.

Boadicea clipping tickets.

Three Venuses of Willendorf

blocking the exhibit.

Is each of these figurines

meant to represent the goddess?

Or constitute an offering from votaries

by way of worship? You express

surprise at such a wide variety,

and I stay absolutely silent.

Each wood or stone statue stands

and holds her breasts or clasps

her hands above her solar plexus,

and though the guide itemizes reasons

against nakedness: social; shame;

the cold; aesthetic; to turn aside

the evil eye; the first four are

discarded easily enough in argument,

I think, but the eye is mine.

The Effects

from The Catalogue of the Universe

To see the gods withdraw,

dethroned, exposed to ridicule,

was our allotted truth –

and not without its suffering.

They weren’t dislodged

by other, stronger gods:

they simply came to nothing.

That line of enquiry closed.

With space-time there are rules

on how to leave completely:

accrete, accrete, be massive,

wait, grow obsolete, begin

to shrink, speed up, cave in,

collapse and vanish –

and amid the photographs

of supergiants, red dwarfs,

the neon spiral nebulae,