PILGRIMAGE
City of actors, one eye on the crowd,
republican shadows and pulsating beats,
city of anger, of music and mirth,
wealth and hunger, history and dirt.
Dublin, it's making me old, you are,
turning black hairs grey,
your satirical mould, that smoke-fired cold
are eating lungs away,
eating me and your burr-haired children
and your motley old prophets as well.
I burnt my poems before I came away
but they're rising bright in a fever.
A Celtic Twilight passes with heroes and martyrs
in proud processions through plastic and plaster
and peeling patterns of wallpaper.
Put on more coal to warm the soul.
Time, when this smouldering's cold
to travel north to the border
where soldiers' feet beat empty streets
and tanks roll fast against the blasts
and tourists disappeared photographs.
Time. Where hope foments in blood gold chalices
and whispered fears are sipped,
stout-stained, smoke wreathed
and belched as scornful, watchful laughter.
Time to visit the store where my father was born,
the grave where wee uncle Rogie lies,
old neighbours who recall the auction day
when my grandparents sold and fled away
lest the children be bled in the Troubles.
Time. Where impassion pleas for peace are still heard
in the searing suffering of outraging fires
in the burnished minds of zealots and liars
as they did in scarce remembered days
when my family fled for a mission land
so far, so safe from the border.
Previously published as 'So Far, So Safe from the Border', in Republic
Readings, n.3,
2001, p.22.
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