COLETTE BRYCE
Wish You Were
Here, an aftertaste of traffic taints
the city's breath, as mornings
yawn and bare this street
like teeth. Here, airplanes leaving
Heathrow scare this house
to trembling; these rooms protect
their space with outstretched walls,
and wait. And evenings fall
like discs in a jukebox, playing
a song called Here, night after night.
Wish you were. Your postcards
land in my hall like meteorites.
'Wish You Were' is taken from The Heel of Bernadette (Picador, 2000)
NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL
The Language Issue
I place my hope in the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant
in a basket of intertwined
iris leaves,
its underside proofed
with bitumen and pitch
then set the whole thing down amidst
the sedge
and bullrushes by the edge
of a river
only to have it borne hither and thither
not knowing where it may end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh's daughter.
From Pharaoh's Daughter (The Gallery Press, 1990)
ALAN JENKINS
Street Life
I come home at all hours; all hours she recieves
her callers, her gentlemen friends, upstairs.
In the street, a car draws up, she breaks into a foolish little run.
I know her. Even in the rawest weather, she wears
no tights or stockings, leaves three buttons of her blouse undone.
Seeing me, calling, she comes over. We are alike, we share
the same sad, comical fear of being caught
together on our corner, of our long views falling
short, of being caught, of being caught.
Flirting with me, she fiddles with her hair, her shoes,
makes something up when I ask her how she got the bruise
that cascades down her cheek, the purples, reds and blues
of a fruit tart; the colours, almost, of my glans that night
I paid her twenty quid and pushed it up her, dry and tight.
From “The Drift “ (Chatto & Windus, 2000)
EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN
Studying the Language
On Sundays I watch the hermits coming out of their holes
Into the light. Their cliff is as full as a hive.
They crowd together onto warm shoulders of rock
Where the sun has been shining, their joints crackle.
They begin to talk after a while.
I listen to their accents, they are not all
From this island, not all old,
Not even, I think, all masculine.
They are so wise, they do not pretend to see me.
They drink from the scattered pools of melted snow:
I walk right by them and drink when they have done.
I can see the marks of chains around their feet.
I call this my work, these decades and stations —
Because, without these, I would be a stranger here.
From The Brazen Serpent (Wake Forest University Press, 1995)