The Shell
	for Patrick Galvin
		
	We are framed in café windows,
	Faces half in sunlight, half
             In shade, as if one part of us
	
               Was not yet born for light,
	While the other blazed, drunk
	On flame, yearning for the sun's
 
	Heart. Our round white tables
	Cast elongated arcs of shadow,
	Waitresses flick in and out of
 
	Light and dark like beings
	Whose substance must always change:
	We are waiting for something.
 
	The waiting becomes ourselves,
	We do not move, the afternoons
	Run on. Somewhere among the plastic
 
	Flowers our rogue angels climb
	Outwards from the fixed world's edge
	Towards our last known point in time:
 
	This is what we wait for, to be
	Redeemed, to have some other lean
	Against the door and push it open-
 
	We get lost so easily, drift
	And hear that sad echoed closing.
	We sit listening to the conversation
 
	At the next table, hoping to hear
	The tongued lock click in every word,
	The sea singing in an ear of shell.
 
				
 
				Fred Johnson
 
 
 
 
	The Corner Stone
	 for Puy Larraz
 
	Chipped by centuries of safe homecoming
	Along tight streets where no lamp shone,
 
	That polished granite resting place
	Steadfast, tenacious, almost forgotten.
 
	The cart wheel worn to a mouldering blade,
	Pulverised among the weeds in a back-yard,
 
	Old halos of thunder and spark
	Flaked by much more than mere stone.
 
	A beginning, like the first book
	In a library for young minds,
 
	Guiding them out of a corner
	Towards the open spaces of their lives.
 
				John Liddy
 
	There's A Knock
 
	There was a knock on the door.
	She stood,
	hair dripping, a sad expression,
	mascara on her cheeks.
	Half afraid, I asked her to come in.
 
	Handing her
	a cup of tea
	her wet shivering body
	She stood there drying herself,
	trusting me.
 
	On the heater
	her blouse blew wrinkled.
	I gave her my bed
	I slept on the floor
	And read a Bachelor's Life.
	
			Paul Dunne 	
        
 
         On Hake Head
 
	The cliff top path lies
	muddy scarred from
	horse's hooves, bicycle wheels
	and the leisure walking feet
	of people.
 
	Few, however, make it as far
	as the graveyard where a
	sarcophagus squats topped
	by a widow's walk of railings
	tethered to the stone
	by threads of rust.
	The inscription has been reduced to
	illegible cuts bleeding lichen
	by the elements.
 
	A patin of strand lies below
	ready to catch any
	falling crumbs of rock or shale
	dislodged by the sea's ministrations.
	And I can see, when I climb down,
 
	A Fairy Liquid bottle
	a Marlboro packet
	(sundry other containers all empty)
	an orange ball
	a dead cow
	a doll's leg
	and a jet ribbon of cloud
	above
	the townland of Courtaporteen,
	on Hake Head.
 
	I can read none of this.
	It is as though someone
	had placed and shaken
	all of these words
			inside
	a snow-glass-symbolic,
	indicative of something.
	But what?
                            Eoin Brady
 
 
 
        Slievereagh *
	
	Speckled mountain
	of the dispossessed,
	stone walled fields
	pampered to fruition -
	blood sweated survival
	of a dying race
 
	Dark bogland
	of age - old time
	tapestry woven
	of flower and sedge,
	water trickles, mingles
	gushing down
 
	Mark of Ó Loinsigh
	all tumbled
	ancient standing stones
	untouched fort remains
	sapling forest invades
	windswept speckled place
 
				
 
				Joan Fitzgerald
 
 
	*Slievereagh or Sliabh Riach -
	Mountainy Place in Baile Mhuirne
	Macroom
	Co.Cork
 
 
 
 
Milltown Cross
 
	Do you remember when you turned down
	the Muirioch road
	and that friend with you took the straight road
	to Dunquin ?
 
	We went both ways ourselves many times,
	laughing, with light or heavy loads,
	turning the corner where you once promised
	yourself a long and hard road.
 
	In the garden at that corner
	they put Christmas lights in the tree;
	night creeps in from the distance
	like a dog behind the wall.
 
	you were no longer with me on the road home
	last night, at the last turn;
	you were climbing, where no-one could follow,
	the gradient through Milltown and Burnham
	and watching, like me, the sea clouds
	at a Michelangelo burn.
 
 
				Muireann Maguire
 

 
 
	Mischievous Poet
 
	You will find him
	in the early morning
		listening to music.
	But turning off the record
		before it becomes too love-lively.
	Or at Midsummer
		in a country lane
	picking buttercups
		the symbol of ingratitude
	and going his way.
 
	Or at teatime at home
	eating his hard-boiled egg
		and thinking it could have been rare.
	Remembering the digs in Dublin
		long ago
		and how good they were.
 
	Or maybe at night in Bellair
		looking at the stars
	and placing a gift
		at the foot of the tall tree.	
	Remembering his first love.
 
	He is alone now,
	His friends have gone away.
	Pity him.
 
 
				Donal Ahern
 
 
 
 
	The Crying Woman
 
	The dead have arisen because they were never laid to rest,
	Walking carcasses of human existence,
	Souless and spiritless, children who never grew up.
	She is mad, backing down and bowing out.
	She cannot be upset.
 
	Hard done by, lazy, you fantasize,
	Your reality doesn't exist.
	Tact prevail, play the game, whatever you say,
	Absolutely, only you could know.
	Don't antagonize, be silent,
	The crying woman.
 
				Sarah Iremonger
		
	
	Ten O'Clock
 
	There was the upturned sea of faces
	staring at Fr. Crowley's gray phizzog
	as he blathered on watching the clock
	every so often. He was famously fast.
 
	Could in fact do a mass in twenty mins,
	so always drew a crowd at ten.
	Our church at Turner's Cross was
	a masterpiece of mass concrete.
 
	The great oak (or were they elm?)
	doors were sheltered by the stretched arms
	of a crucified, welcoming Christ,
	the stone face stared out to Ballyphehane.
 
	Even Crowley's brevity could not entice
	the hardchaw's who stayed outside,
	smoking, eyeing up the fishnets
	of Adrienne Corri in The News of the World 
          
            Opposite the sadness of the closed doors
	of The Beer Garden, The Little Man's
	that wouldn't open until twelve. Meanwhile
	the strong tang of stale porter smote the air
 
	mixing with tobacco smoke, the grateful tug
	of nicotine into the lungs along with the sulphur
	haze of the blazing match. The trees up
	the long drive to the parochial house were in leaf.
 
	The light inside was a dark yellow
	turning to an umber brown. Crowley's
	rapid chatter boomed over the packed seats,
	men in their pressed suits, clean underwear,
 
	women in nylons, bare upper thighs crossed,
	while a hand holding a rosary stroked
	the slight indentation made in the skirt's nap
	by the snapper of a suspender belt.
 
	I inhaled the yellow light, saw Simon
	of Cyrene bent down to lift the weight
	of the cross off the shoulders of the fallen
	Jesus, felt absolutely no pity.
 
	Fr. Curlytop nodded a svelte head
	at the tabernacle, swiftly genuflected
	(from out the black chasuble there popped
	briefly a black-soled shoe) then zapped off.
 
	To bacon and eggs, elaborate and quiet breakfasts,
	the ministration of a housekeeper
	I fancied all devotion, toil, pride, and love
	in a house sweet with beeswax and lavender.
 
				Robert Welch
 
The Bone Pickers
(Tribute to Patrick Galvin on his seventh birthday)
 
What of the night times that will not stay forgotten
on that stairs, the moon shining on your face
and the monk in the tower of Red Abbey, the bones of
his fingers creaking from the frost,
the Mad Woman going to her nuptials among the bones,
your mother's head on her bed of stones.
 
Tomorrow the snow will come down on your wandering Aunt,
coming up the road to your father's house
in cracked boots belonging to a man, singing
enough to set the neighbours gawking, driving
to his disgraced bed your father until the last echo,
boots and voices, fade.
 
Like all of us, your Da would be respectable,
no relation to a woman of the roads
and she au fait with every reverend mother from here
to Armagh- at every Angelus bell raising her voice
for bread, her belly flat against her ribs like a hound.
 
Even in your sleep the civic guards are marching
from Blackpool down to Blackrock and you hear them
coming up the road in their blue-black jackets,
in their iron boots. And your mother stares at them
from the window. And the neighbours stare.
 
The Mad Woman stands her ground, her hair streeling
the snow melting down on her upraised face, searching
the blank sky for a crust of mercy. She passes and
re-passes through your sleep. In the morning she lies on the
steps of the Opera House, a player exhausted,
curled up speechless in the last act of her tragi-comedy.
 
Your mother stands a long time at the window. Many times,
many windows. I see the moon on her face as on yours.
Or is that the pale of waiting for the Bone Pickers-
bones of this and bones of that, only flesh up at the convent
and plump roast duck for his Holiness the Pope.
 
 
 

 
Woman, be grateful for your lot,
count your blessings and stir the pot
The Bone Pickers will soon be home. Remember them.
And tall. How did they grow so tall. From porter and
wife-beating, say the priests of Evergreen. They say,
we are the Bone Pickers and we are tall from spite.
 
Your mother stands at the window.
She hears the river, Katty Barry calling the swans,
Connie the Lark letting loose his pigeons,
Mary Olivia back from the boats on her high heels,
the Little Good Shepherd scuttling to her day of charity at
Lizzie Lantrys - thirteen she have and eight consumptive,
 
 as dawn dribbles into Margaret Street.
 
				Robert O'Donoghue