Poems

FIREPLACE

The fireplace came
from the Ulster Bank.

Not that any money changed hands.
It was payback time

for papering ceilings,
graining doors,

and, letting ourselves in,
the Saturday you built

in a high back yard,
bars on the windows,

the bonfire of banknotes –
tired fivers, tenners,

pale, withdrawn –
took ages to catch

but once lit burnt
bright as a brazier,

a big grate’s been backed up,
kept in overnight

and with the gentlest raking
can still warm hands.

BOAT SHED

The pliancy of larch
fed length by length

through the steam box
in Corrigan’s lean-to shed

and bent, still sappy,
to the curvature

of a keel my quiet father’s
planing, sanding down,

painting coat after coat
that trademark blue

the Reids, the Boyds
will blazon summer

on summer now
the length and breadth

of the lough,
staying away all day,

the islands to themselves,
slipping back in the dark

to the shore, the unlit streets,
juggling the oar-locks,

leaving back the oars.

THE LAST TRAIN

Let them have been
of the commonest,

sprigs of heather,
ragwort, whins,

something of
every hole in the hedge,

the flowers the last train in
bore above her wiper,

Bundoran Junction
settling for silence,

no longer what it was,
Leitrim unscrolling,

one final time,
field by rushy field,

on the windscreen.

THE FLORENCE COURT FIRE

With all the water,
it was touch and go

for the dining room ceiling,
its pale stucco.

A local man though
knew enough to know

boring holes in the floor
would let the water go.

In his memory there repeats
in pale garlands, loops,

rococo, rococo.

THE ERNE LAUNDRY

Lewd as linen,
the women from the laundry

linked arms on the West Bridge.
Mothers smoothed the paths of daughters.

The river blushed,
ran red before the usual sky.

SIGN-WRITER

Molloy the sign-writer’s
funeral’s taken the long way round.

Shop fronts line the route,
stooped alphabets –

the care he took –
gothic, roman, sans serif

and, everywhere you look,
the butcher’s, the baker’s,

his signature gold leaf.

MERCERS’ WINDOW

That side of High Street
gets the sun early

and the threadbare awning’s
no help to the shop girl

reaching blind into
Mercers’ window

past brooches, bracelets,
Belleek, to reach,

right at the back,
in its velveteen pouch,

the new slimline Parker,
its chevronned top

a promise of fluency, ease
has beckoned all summer

to scholarship boys
will be leaving soon

for lodgings, digs,
whose addresses

they rehearse, repeat,
on the fly-leaves of

textbooks, primers.
The ink dries to an uncertain blue

on the tall leafless avenues,
Wellesley, Fitzroy, Dunluce.

LADDER

The angle of the ladder
propped against scaffolding

in the chapel this lunchtime –
they’re doing work to the

stations in the men’s aisle –
couldn’t but put you in mind

of the one in Tintoretto’s,
or is it Titian’s, great

Deposition, down which
workmen, in their oldest

clothes, are shouldering,
rung by rung, a limp Christ,

taking infinite pains,
at the foot a bevy of women,

living saints, vigilant
but keen too to be off,

first with the news,
to outlying parts,

landing in unannounced,
an answer for everything.

HANDWRITING

My mother’s handwriting
grew loose-limbed with age.

Its shoulders sloped.
It wandered, free as filigree

lace, discursive,
all over the place.

A postcard from Bundoran
scarcely has room for her name.

What with the walks,
the waves, the weather.

Oh, the rain, it really lashed!
Cheerio. See you Friday. Love Mam.

FANLIGHT

You’d have loved a fanlight
but made do with night walks

along Willoughby, up The Brook,
contented with the glow from

Richardson’s, the Miss Kidd’s,
whatever hallway happened to be lit.

CLERK

Sifting through the rubble
of Jim Brady’s bookie’s –

Nugent’s Entry’s not what it was –
what are the odds, I wonder,

of unearthing, on the back of a docket,
in the margins of racing pages,

one of the views, vignettes
my uncle Gerry drew –

reed beds, row boats, the shore,
what he saw through the one window,

a pinched, permanent repertoire –
passing the time, doodling,

as they waited on results
coming through of evening meetings

in England, in the fifties,
through fog bound November,

December, early in the clear new year.

BUS RUN

They’ve been to early mass,
swelling the men’s aisle,

raising eyes and now the old
Eden Street bus station air’s

thick with nicknames, sallies
as The Bottom Shop regulars,

townies to a man, face the camera
in their best shirts and ties.

It’s the annual outing to Donegal.
Their heads are full of scenery

and lines from songs.
My father’d know them all:

confraternity men, bank runners, clerks,
tall shop boys, Campbell the Barber,

boatmen tied up for the day.
They find their own seats, settle.

The bus indicates, pulls out onto Wellington.
That year’s newspapers get spread,

The Press, The Independent.
There’ll be singing soon.

They’ll get the rosary over with.
The forecast’s good.

They disappear from view on The West Bridge.

AT THE NYLON

Hosiery’s another word
kept the town on its toes,

tall girls in work
from their teens

to their pencilled prime.
I envied their sheer cheek,

the seamless chat.
I hung around the gate,

inspecting hem lines,
felt the spring in their step

at quitting time.

SPAIN 1

Who that was there could forget
the morning quiet Father Daly

announced, from the altar,
he was off to Spain

to serve God and Franco?
They had a night for him.

They saw his pale face
darken under a southern sun.

He took a hit at Zaragoza
ricocheted round the chapel

at May Devotions.
He was never the same.

Invalided home,
the town expecting miracles,

he lay for years
in the Priests’ House,

a ghost at a window,
coming to the door

with medals, mass cards
in his tiny, tanned hands.

SPAIN 2

One of the Mackles
came back from Spain

with a bracelet of bullets
and a whole new lingo.

He had the whole town at it.
Venceremos! Madre mia! Viva Franco!

MCNULTY’S

The bikes outside McNulty’s
all lean the one way.

Taken in at night,
they nose the glass,

beckon, in Japanese,
to boys beyond the town

few know by name
who before the summer’s out

will go head to head
with the county’s roads,

a simple arithmetic
it can be fatal to get wrong.

Grasses obscure the road signs
at the Double Corners,

out by the Five Points.

REUNION

There’s an extra spring
in their step

as the Old Boys
pose for The Herald

in The Brothers’ Yard.
A generation’s thinned

to a class of thirty
wondering what to do

with their hands.
As they settle,

straighten ties, a seam,
the talk’s of funerals,

how they’re getting home.
Dispersing,

nicknames get traded,
mnemonics.

Someone’s mimicking –
pay him no heed –

Adrian, Damascene,
the no longer quite

so venerable Bede.

ARNEY BRIDGE

The passing places
were a tight squeeze

but to get stuck in there
the night of a carnival,

with one of the band,
was as good as have

your name in lights,
up there with

The Skyrockets,
Gene and the Gents,

the big van idling
just out of sight,

the manager and his brother
at odds with one another

over a map of Ireland,
lining up the next dance.

FREES

The things that linger.
Mickey Brewster,

the town’s prize athlete,
mid fielder,

who taught us maths,
long autumn evenings,

before a big game,
the County or Ulster,

the Gaels’ Field to himself,
practising frees,

sweet kick after kick
sailing high between

tapering, freshly limed posts.

AT THE OLD TECH

There are no chairs
in the sign writing class,

only mottoes and fluent
boys at blackboards

practising apostrophes,
ampersands, Os.

They all have their own slant.
They’ll fan out soon

across the town
with ladders,

the best of brushes,
not a hair out of place,

touching up shop
fronts, awnings,

Tullys, Tylers,
the threadbare blind

on Mercers’ the Jewellers,
Cooper and Cooper solicitors,

Armstrong and Taylors’
pestle and mortar,

part of their repertoire,
The Erne Snack Bar

and, at the far end,
for Harold Irvine,

starting with the sky,
waiting for it to clear,

large as life, a marvel –
by nightfall it’s the whole talk –

gate posts, a summer meadow
and, casual as you like,

cattle grazing a butcher’s gable.

COMFORT

Asked for my ideal of comfort,
little now I expect will surpass

Sunday mornings, the bottom back room,
that bed against the chimney breast,

my head on my father’s bony arm
and nothing between us but his regular breathing

and the exact weight of a Lisbellaw blanket.

MISSIONERS

The missioners lodged
at the Royal Hotel,

savoured their celebrity
the length of Main Street.

Two sturdy umbrellas
bobbing on the parapet

were the prompt response
when the heavens opened

on the West Bridge.
A brace of Burberrys,

breviaries
made the rounds of the

Broadmeadow.
Men’s Week was all

complicity and yarns,
added seats in the aisles.

The second week
a flotilla of headscarves

converged nightly
on the porch,

a sombre confab
for when it was over.

NIGHTINGALE

When Bertie Trimble
heard Mick McCluskey,

who played piccolo
in the Grattan Band,

whistling up the Forthill
they say he scanned

the beech tops
for a nightingale.

I don’t know so much about that.
But this I do know,

if you listen hard,
you can still hear the Grattans,

their disbanded fifes and drums,
pounding the streets,

their leader’s baton
surmounted by a harp,

in uniforms the mill girls’
pocket money’s paid for.

PRESS

Summer and tennis,
its exertions, threatens

the town’s equanimity,
the convent girls’ poise.

A lilac trail of cardigans
ascends the Forthill,

laps The Broadmeadow.
Meanwhile, discarded

under the stairs, a caution,
kept in, confined,

my sister’s school racquet
lies rigid in its press

out of fear it buckle, warp
under pressure from the strings.

REQUISITION

The army’s combing
the county for horses,

shooing them from wet fields
out by Arney, Bellanaleck

into boxes are kept overnight
in Magee’s Yard, at the back

of every house in Eden Street.
Soon it’ll be all cattle country.

Point-to-point’ll never
get back on its feet.

Hoof marks are hardening
into history out by Rossahilly,

Blaney, the straights of Dunbar.

ROCKERY

The rough-hewn stones
boatmen carted back

from down the lough,
low in the water,

were de rigueur for
backyard rockeries

in the town.
Spring gentians,

far from home,
are bedding down

in crannies, crevasses
by the scullery window.

Campanula, a climber,
has launched an ascent

of Cox’s wall.
The yard, meanwhile’s

due a coat of whitewash.
It’ll trigger an avalanche.

RATTLE

A bird in the reeds has a call
like a football rattle.

I’ll google it.
I’ll have to wade through stuff

about the Matthews Cup Final.

1962

I was nine that febrile summer
but still took some convincing

the cylinders outside Head Street clinic
weren’t primed and pointing at Cuba,

or that young Donnelly, who’d scaled the wall
of the Crumlin Road and was clearly now

our only hope, wouldn’t be caught
in the beam of light crossing,

recrossing the kitchen ceiling –
the wireless dial’s reflection,

a searchlight on now night and day –
as, safe house by safe house,

he made his deliberate way westwards,
every back door on the snib.

TAXIS

The town’s first taxis
were big private cars

you called at the house to book,
Kellys of Eden Street,

Joe Flanagan at the West Bridge.
It was so much a mile.

We’re on our way to the hospital,
visiting friends. In the back

all you can hear is my mother
talking away, Peter Kelly going

yes Ma’am, yes Ma’am.

HAMILTON AND PRESTON

The limits set our Sunday walks
were lane ends, gables,

a tree we had no name for
and, the light going,

not a sinner about –
a slate I skimmed there’s

airborne yet –
some family quarry

where the name’s died out.

GRITTERS

A fifties winter’s caught
a county on the hop.

The gritters are out
on the Irvinestown Road.

In an amber light
boys from the town,

shovels fluent as scythes,
fling gravel at fast thickening skies.

BUILDING DERRYCHARA

You got a whole
new slant on things

chalking out the houses,
building Derrychara.

The town was losing
its last green hill,

acquiring, in return,
two mountains,

cornflower blue,
an unsuspected lough,

a brand new bend in the river.
That first winter –

we’d soldiered for years,
the Keenans and us,

the McKeowns,
big Jim Kellegher –

we watched from
white diggers,

the warm cabs of lorries,
Scallon’s, McLaughlin

and Harvey’s, whole
hillsides hewn hollow,

fields fold into their future.
It was March before

a brick was laid,
a lintel lifted into place.

A gable was shelter
from Spring rain,

rafters a skyline,
or the pale sketch for one.

Roof tiles, red ochre,
made the town look up,

colour after nothing
but slate for centuries.

On a June morning
a through road

unspooled
like black ribbon.

That fourth summer
broke the back of it.

We left behind
a pebbledashed estate,

porches, suntraps,
views you could frame,

one or two cars,
young couples

in bay windows
not knowing

which way to turn.

THE PRESENTATION BROTHERS ARE LEAVING ENNISKILLEN

The ear it is first registers
the loss, their leaving.

The town’s an accent less.
The Brothers’ Yard’s bereft.

They are missed from the Broadmeadow.
With a swish of soutane

a whole nomenclature thins
and is gone. A century

of standing at blackboards,
Algeo thin as El Greco,

Falconer’s Alsatians
scaling the school wall,

Damian, whist nights,
cradling a Powers,

Aloysius with his breviary,
rosary, and, from under the bridge,

an urgent, visored Hilary
running with his bees.

PAINT

A fleck of paint
on a chair from home’s

sufficient to summon
whole landings, ceilings,

the skirtings on stairs,
banisters my father

and a neighbour,
on their hands and knees,

have sanded down,
puttied, primed and,

all of us grounded,
given a final coat is

taking forever to dry.

AIR RAID

The town’s one warning
was a false alarm.

Not that that stopped
a convoy of prams

making straight
for Coleshill,

the back of the creamery,
pushing and shoving,

vying for vantage,
making a meal of it,

not turning for home
till the second, longer sounding

of the Scotch Store horn.

COMMENTARY

He’s rounded the Coliseum,
way out on his own

and now Emil Zátopek’s
sprinting barefoot across

the kitchen ceiling,
the house in darkness,

the finishing line Athlone.

THE COUNTY

Beyond the shrubs,
the pale verandah,

the sitting out, like Simla,
spring was not expected

at the County Hospital.
Observing no set hours

visitors sat on talking,
to no one in particular,

ran errands,
passed round tea,

read out from the paper,
The Herald, The Reporter,

went for matron,
a rare exception,

were called on too,
winter and summer,

one final favour,
to make up a quorum,

the barest minimum,
far as the Convent where,

their duty done,
ahead of rain,

they turn and face
the healthy town again.

ADJUSTMENT

With double summer time
north of the border,

one of Maurice Cassidy’s buses,
or so his pale posters advised,

could have you in Bundoran an hour
before you’d even left the house.

The unlooked-for hour we spent
adjusting to an ocean, an horizon,

willing the waves whiter,
the sand finer, all the while

gawkily undressing
over by some rocks.

Be careful, be careful,
my mother’s words

were wasted on the wind
while we ran ourselves ragged,

poor, pallid Picassos,
on the harder sand.

Mr. Lemass and Princess Grace
held their smiles on the front pages.

My father fought down the paper.
We ran into neighbours,

saw another side to them.
The amusements were bumper to bumper.

Over tea, bread and butter
in the West End Café,

one eye out for the bus,
sand getting everywhere,

as my father went on with the paper,
my mother asked after

the wife of the owner,
a woman she’d worked with,

knew from home
who’d never, she told us,

standing, pouring out tea,
settled, gotten used to the sea,

the racket it made at night.
Hedgerows, lane ends, big red barns,

she missed the simple things.
If she had it to do again,

she said, turning for the stairs,
she’d stay at home

and never venture further
than you could hurl a stick.

DEDICATION

There’s only one a in accordion.
I can’t be the only one’s

spotted the mistake on the
Tempo Band’s big drum

in this week’s Impartial,
pictured at a ceremony

of dedication for their new
uniforms. All newfangled,

they’ll sway now, no mistake,
down the b roads of the county,

shuffle in time to let, slow churn
by churn, a milk lorry pass,

take roundabouts,
junctions in their stride,

break off for tea, in flasks,
exhausting their repertoire,

starting at the beginning,
melodies, medleys,

no one else about,
out Clabby direction,

up over Ballyreagh,
Edenmore, Doon.

AT THE NYLON FACTORY REUNION

Remember the lunchtimes,
trying everything on?

How ribaldry begets
camaraderie, us all

just twigging
to the brilliant wheeze

of being employees.
A resident manicurist,

for god’s sake.
You couldn’t have nails

snagging on the fabric.
Austerity was out the window.

A town on its knees
was pulling up its socks,

putting an end
to make do and mend.

Our own swimming pool,
can you imagine?

Luxury’s good for the soul.
We had the time of our lives.

Nothing later would match it:
the cricket team, the crest,

the Christmas fund,
the lingerie canteen!

It was too good to last.
The first we heard was in the papers.

By the Monday the receivers were in,
the whole shebang auctioned off,

the machinery, the knitters,
the Harrods order cancelled,

Madame Helène upped sticks
and away back to England,

most of us in there from a girl,
as good as. All those discontinued lines,

the amethyst, the topaz, the pearl.

STOP PRESS

The town had little to add
to the evening editions.

Hearsay makes poor copy
and anyway flooding

on the Coa* Road’s seasonal,
regular as Christmas,

is news to no one that matters.
There’s a story though breaking

in Larry Hall’s long shop,
among the Heralds and Reporters,

Darling Street will struggle
to contain and by nightfall

be the whole talk,
trumping even that low sun’s

caught the recessed porch
of the chapel, an archangel,

no less, rampant,
casually spearing a dragon,

the church’s patron –
the angel that is,

not the dragon –
a pair of painters,

up from Dublin
in their painters’ smocks,

worked on all winter,
sheet after sheet

of gold leaf,
well into the evening,

often by torchlight,
standing well back,

just to get the thing finished.

* pronounced Co

AFTER DEVOTIONS

After devotions,
passing the chapel,

you were as likely to hear
O’Donnell Abú

as Bach or Handel,
Maguire of the orchard,

everybody up,
pulling out all the stops.

TENNIS TEAS

Lord Belmore’s favourites,
the Winslows, the Cranes,

got to sit on his knee,
had chocolates sent round

on their birthday,
tied with a ribbon

in the corner. Meanwhile,
on loan for the day,

you served sandwiches
from a great tray, curtsied,

smiled, made yourself scarce,
leaving no trace

except for the crumbs
on the terrace, the courts,

in the packed pavilion
I’d go round picking up

hungrily, over the years.

LIPSTICK

Tell me this,
do girls round ‘Skea,

parts of Roslea,
the night of a dance,

in lieu of lipstick,
still press to their mouths

the crimson masthead of
The Sacred Heart Messenger,

hoping some of it will rub off,
before setting out,

six to a car –
it’s a jungle out there –

on missions of their own,
no knowing where it will end.

TOURNAMENT

The parade out of the way,
the long field blessed,

there’s nothing now
for the Coa* Band

but to unbutton,
settle back,

their macs for pillows,
in the untrampled grass,

in out of the road,
under the trees.

Ahead of them
an afternoon

of minerals and teas.
The marquee’s like an oven.

They tie up the sides.
The tannoy annoys

anyone near it,
carries across fields.

A crowd’s roped in
for the races, the half mile,

the hundred yards dash.
They’re running way behind.

The fancy dress
is all over the place.

They’re clearing the stage
for the dancing,

the adjudicating.
The raffle’s being wound up.

The winner of the grand draw
can’t be traced.

Hold onto your tickets.
And before you know it

it’s time to retune,
shuffle into line,

the five-a-side decider
fizzling out, the first

trestles folded,
the crowd drifting away

towards the hot cars,
hardly anybody about

for the presentations,
the perpetual cup,

the closing ceremonies.

*Pronounced Co

ARGENTA

The real reason Sean Nethercott
didn’t sleep the whole time

he was on the Argenta
wasn’t the squalls on Belfast Lough

or the younger lads trying out their Irish.
No, nothing so virtuous.

He missed, he told us,
couldn’t get over without

the drone of the motor
coming from Whaley’s Bakery,

two doors up from his mother,
the nightlong company of loaves

rising, at first light
the vans leaving The Square,

up the street the first shops lit.

EXAMS

Exam weather
and the day girls

up the Forthill
are shielding their eyes

from irregular verbs,
Count Metternich,

the lesser Odes of Keats.
They’re fully stretched,

and not sleeping.
It can still go either way

at the Congress of Vienna.

MORRELL

Was it Morrell?
or Turkington?

Could it have been Frith?
If she said it once.

What’s this they called
I should have written it down

the tall manager of
The Savings Bank –

she used to point him out –
whose promising son,

this bit I remember, I quote:
ended up with his name

in italics, underlined
on the Bank of England

five pound note?

DRESSER

Two duck eggs
on a rimless ledge,

pale as delft,
a repetition of plates

breasting wire, some lace,
commemorative mugs

from a decade
when your dead were young.

Most times it feels
as though I’ve lost it all.

And then, some evening,
a flame, rallying,

frames angled forms,
and among them yours, Mother,

breasting a chair,
your back to the dresser wall.

THESE MORNINGS

These mornings,
early, in lieu of letters,

there’s waiting in the hall,
courtesy of curtains,

their drop, the way they fall,
a bar of pure, near solid gold.

Aztec bright, brilliant. Who was it said
nothing can add beauty to light?

There’ll be nothing like it
the whole rest of the day.

PRACTICE

I like an empty chapel
or just the sexton

stooping between pews.
But, left to choose,

I’d chance some evening,
in the run up to Christmas,

on the senior choir’s
being put through its paces,

going over and over,
from a ring binder,

some carol or other,
O, Holy Night say,

the soprano solo
just coming in,

for accompaniment
the porch door’s

practised moderato,
its refusal ever to be still.

The year’s first snow
has just begun to lie.

The tracks I make
are twice as deep

as the ones I made going in.

HAW HAW

The war was a giggle,
air raid warnings,

ration books
and smuggling

Haw Haw upstairs
in the laundry, a frisson

of treason, Germany
calling, Germany calling

through heavy linen sheets.
It was no laughing matter,

though, the night he enquired,
out of the blue, whether

the Town Hall clock
was still running five minutes late

and how the Town Hall was looking
in its new coat of paint.

Have a good long look.
It mightn’t get another.

Nightly now Messerschmitts
banked over Cuilcagh,

strafing Main Street
with the hardest rain.

Jackboots goose-stepped
the Broadmeadow,

swastikas swathed the Fort Hill.
It took the longer evenings

to put paid to your phoney war,
send you back to your laundry,

your girlfriends,
the getting ready,

the nightly adventure
of the blacked out streets.

LEMON’S

The night fire at Lemon’s
the builders smouldered

a lifetime, wouldn’t be doused.
The gentlest wind,

at street corners,
entries, fanned it,

plying it with talk,
as it rallied, died down,

diminishing the dark
in the tinder dry

and still charred town.

AUCTION

Up Eden Street in the early dark
I’m struggling to get a handle on

an incomplete encyclopaedia
you’ve bid on blind,

and unopposed,
from the crowded stairs

of that dark house
up The Pound Brae

you’d walk past for years,
a wall of laurel, without

seeing so much as a postman
and whose every last stick

of furniture’s been listed,
labelled, laid out now

in the morning room,
pantry, scullery

and, not least –
shelved in the best

of mahogany, its windows
propped open by what,

now that I think of it,
can only have been

volumes three to five
of Britannica –

the panelled, steep,
and now empty library.

WINDOW

I woke this morning
to a window

the sun’d impressed
on calico.

An early Rothko’s
crossing town,

incognito,
the museum world agog.

BRICK

The half of the town
was build of Arney brick

looked up to the half
was dressed in imported stone.

APOSTOLIC

You should have heard my Aunt Nora –
picture them, Sunday nights,

the Commercial’s upper room,
the Apostolic Works Society

regulars dragging gold thread
through God knows how many

copes, stoles, albs,
each a ton weight,

darning for Africa –
you should have heard her retail

for the umpteenth time –
don’t hold your breath –

the town Communist
and bookie’s clerk

Andy McRoe’s one,
I’m getting there,

about the missioners,
the rambling build up,

forgetting bits,
losing her thread,

the masterly coup de grace:
I suppose when they cross the equator

they tell the people they’ll freeze to death.

BULB

Devotions over,
or Benediction,

from the empty vestry
I’m turning off the lights,

blind aisle by aisle,
on pale kneelers

genuflectors
till the polished stations

are all there is to go by
and a single bulb

the wattage
of a distant

all night garage
sways in the porch

staying on now
as long as it takes

for the very last to leave.

TULLY’S

Quarter to nine and
they’re down on their knees

in the Menswear Department,
not meaning to rise till

they’ve seen the back
of the last Glory Be

and Paddy Shiels has gathered his beads,
leaving only the litany

the Hail Holy Queen,
all the trimmings.

PELMET

What was it about pelmets
and propriety made the front room

seem incomplete,
only half furnished till,

one slow Saturday,
to a template all your own,

from a sheet of plywood
freed, sprung that morning

from a rack in Dickies’ yard
and set between two kitchen chairs,

you’d sketched and sawn
those perfect loops, swags

we’d sit beneath for years,
the offcuts, outsize commas,

quavers dropping to the floor
like brief bursts of applause

you weren’t about
long enough to enjoy

MOTORING

Early evening
at Erne Engineering,

the mechanics have drifted
off home, leaving

Bobby Donaldson,
above the works

to wait on the squad of men,
boys more like,

he’s sent, in fresh overalls,
four to a car, to meet

the new Cortinas
off the boat.

Around about now
they’ll be cruising

in convoy –
we’re talking

the early sixties,
before the M1 –

through Caledon,
Aughnacloy.

They’re at Tamlaght by nightfall.
By morning they’ll be

bumper to bumper
in the new showroom,

the salesmen pacing about,
leaning in the window –

we’ll see what we can do,
she’s easy on the juice –

everywhere that new car smell,
the number plates going

IL, IL, IL.