Navigation
- Home
- Philosophy
- Europe
- International
- Peace efforts
- Poets
- Artists beyond Images
- Culture
- Newsletter
- Links
- Imprint
City by Paula Meehan
- Hearth
What is the fire you draw to
When you clutch each other
Between the sheets? What cold do
You fear? What drives you near
Madness, the jealousy you daily
Bear? That tyrant time
Sifting through the glass? Tell me
A story, not a rhyme
Or made up fancy but plain
As the ash on the grate.
The windowpane rattles, the rain
Beats about the house. Late
Drinkers are turfed from the bar. Wind
Snatches their song, tosses it down –
River to the sea pulsing in your mind.
You slip your mornings, cruise the town.
- Night Walk
Our here you can breathe
Between showers, the street
Empty. Forget your lover
Faithless in the chilly bed
Who’ll wake soon and wonder
If you’ve left for good.
Granite under your feet
Glitters, nearby a siren. Threat
Or a promise? You take Fumbally Lane
To the Blackpitts, cut back by the canal.
Hardly a sound you’ve made, creature
Of night in grey jeans and desert boots,
Familiar of shade. Listen.
The train
Bearing chemicals to Mayo, a dog far off, the fall
Of petals to the paths of the Square,
A child screaming in a third floor flat.
On Mount Street high heels clack,
Stumble in their rhythm, resume.
Let her too get home safe, your prayer
Not like that poor woman last night
Dragged down Glovers Alley, raped there,
Battered to a pulp. Still unnamed.
Your key in the door, you’ve made it back,
A chorus of birds predicting light.
3. Man Sleeping
How deep are you, how far under?
Here’s rosemary I stole on my walk
And the first lilac from the Square.
I lay them on the quilt. You talk
In your dreaming. I am the beating tide,
Mine is the shore. Taste of the sea,
Pulse of my heart. Don’t leave me,
Don’t leave me. I dive beneath
And you stiffen to my mouth.
You’ll be deep within me when you wake,
Your pulse my own. Wave that I ride,
I’ll take everything before you break.
4. Full Moon
She’s up there. You’d know the pull,
Stretching you right as a drumhead,
Anywhere, This morning lull
Between the alarm and quitting the bed
You consider the scrawb on his back –
Sigil of grief: the thumbscrew, the rack.
A paleskin staked on the desert floor
Bound at ankle, at neck, at wrist,
No cavalry in sight to even the score.
This is the knife in the gut; this is its twist.
She’s up there. Tonight they’ll dish out
More downers in prison, in the mental
Asylum, tonight there’ll be more blood spilt
On the street, and you will howl
To her through the tattered cloud scrawled
Across the windowpane, a howl fated
By the blemish of his shoulderblade.
Ask yourself: To what shapechanger has he mated?
5. On the Warpath
The full moon is drawing you tight
As a drumhead. Your face in the mirror
Is cloudy, overcast. No sunny spells;
Frost inland tonight.
Reconnoitre the terrain of the heart,
Scan for high ground. Ambush, skirmish,
Reprisal, this deadly game you play
Give as good as you get.
Choose protective colouring, camouflage,
Know your foe, every move of him,
Every bar of his battle hymn.
Though the outward face is dead cas-
Ual, within the self coiled:
Unsprung, the human, suddenly, wild.
« The realty of a street by Pedro Mateo | The poetry is not in the pity, it's in the city by Andriette Stathi-Schoorel »