The carol singers
have made it the length

of Richardsons’ window,
bare but for a tea set or two,

odd bits of Belleek.
On the Courthouse steps,

the lintels of the bank,
the year’s first snow’s

begun to lie.  They’re all there,
the Morrisses, the Fitzpatricks,

Tommy Kelly and the wife,
the youngest of the Smiths

of Eden Street.
They huddle in the porch

of the Royal Hotel.
At Carl Kerrigan’s,

sharing an umbrella’s
no match for the entry,

they launch into
Once in Royal David’s City,

a favourite.  Overhead
the coloured lights

catch the swirling,
thickening snow.

They stop for tea
at The Melvin,

where they’re expected.
Radio Rentals,

the whole shop’s showing
the half times, the racing.

They stand in, take shelter
at the Munster and Leinster,

make a start on
Away in a manger,

looking a picture.
Felix Hackett’s is packed,

long queues for cardigans.
On the Church Brae

they retune for
In the Bleak Mid-winter,

a near whisper.
They’re breaking up.

The pipes at the back of the
chapel are hot to the touch,

confessions dragging on
up the men’s aisle

as they stand chatting,
drying out.

They make a run for it
straight across Hall’s Lane.

You’ve arrived home late
from Mick Flanagan’s Hall

with two cuts of carpet
were never meant

to meet or match
but before the week’s out

are cushioning our tread
on that worn patch

at the turn of the stairs
took the sun early

and would take
you to have done it

to see the join.

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 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.

Palm Sunday and my father’s
slipped me a lozenge

to last me the Long Gospel
and having sucked it flat

as a ludo counter –
they’re acting it out,

Master Farrell’s Judas,
Jack Keenan’s the High Priest,

it’s like Ben Hur –
I’m suddenly aghast
at breaking my overnight fast.

I appeal to the pillars,
to the saints in their lofty lunettes.

They’re saying nothing.
My only hope now’s

the branch of yew
I broke this morning early

from that unkempt tree
in McNulty’s garden,

climbing to do so
right up inside its

scented, gothic vault.

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.

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.

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’s,
the nightlong company of loaves

rising, at first light
the long vans leaving The Square,

up the street the first shops lit.

What I wouldn’t give
to have been there,

had a ringside seat,
the night the Regal

was reprimanded
for overcrowding

at The Quiet Man,
the fight sequence

spilling over onto
Townhall Street,

Tylers’ doorway,
the pretend punches –

hold me back,
up with the jooks –

more real by the minute,
a score of Sean Thorntons

in their sideways on caps
it took the RM half a morning

to separate from innocent passers by,
Friday night strollers,

looking in windows,
after a bargain,

sensible shoes,
a good summer coat.

Two duck eggs
on a rimless edge,

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,

among them yours, mother,
breasting a chair,

your back to the dresser wall.

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. 

How you can tell
a brick’s from here’s

the impress it bears
of the grass where it’s lain,

a night and a day,
hardening in the brickfields

by the Arney river
before being ferried,

low in the boat,
upstream to the town where,

a lifetime later,
after a shower,

in the right light,
if you know where to look,

the plainest of gables
will dry to a summer meadow,

half  Henry Street
sway unmown,

a russet prairie,
well into the evening,

setting a light to
that whole end of the town.

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.

The river snagged
on the new East Bridge,

confused amongst pillars.
Unravelling it threw up

reedballs, saplings,
the pale debris of islands

whose slow dispersal
left it free to saunter,

in Tuscan calm,
by the leeks and onions

of the nuns’ garden,
skirt town backs,

The Impartial,
The Imperial,

flow unremarked
past Dickie’s,

all rakes and hoes,
Jim Brady’s bookies,

the back streets
and, once past the point

of the Barracks,
take in its widening embrace

the whole rest of the town.

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 your name.

What with the walks, the waves,
the weather.

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

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.

They’re still there,
Father Daly’s trees,

gracing that bend
on the Sligo Road

but who’s left remembers
why they were needed,

the old Gaels’ Field,
lines of men in caps

out on the road,
up to no good,

yahoos, not paying in,
seeing games for free?

The committee’d had enough.
It was past a joke.

The hessian fence hadn’t worked.
Gate receipts were down.

Even county matches,
Galway, Kerry once,

the great Cavan sides
of the forties, the Reillys,

the bryllcreamed Bradys,
living legends

in royal blue jerseys
and week in, week out,

talking over the anthem,
taunting the linesman,

townies, yahoos
cheering on The Gaels.

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 big barracks of a place
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.

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 Sheils has gathered his beads,

leaving only the litany,
the Hail, Holy Queen,

the rest of the trimmings.

Asked for my ideal of comfort,
I expect nothing now to surpass

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

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

and the exact weight of a Lisbellaw blanket.

Term time,
on chair backs

in the kitchen,
pressed, ironed,

my sisters’ uniforms,
two of everything,

blazers, blouses,
pleated skirts,

and to complete the look,
on a hook in the hall,

twin tasseled berets
were swapped, come May,

for panamas
orbited the town

till tea time,
the first shops shutting

and everywhere,
up The Brook,

down Wellington,
out by The Aluminiums,

it’s time to go in.