CONTENT="irish poetry, Irish poetry, Ireland, Irish poets, Irish poems, poetry in Ireland, innovative poetry, experimental poetry, alternative poetry, avant-garde, contemporary poetry, modernist poetry, neo-modernist, neomodernist">

Christchurch. Helix. 9th Month.

Passages of labyrinth repeat;
the crypt gives vellum thighs to the dead,
mark our return in this way;
again we hollow dust-caves, ankle-deep.

Paths are furrowed by rats' feet,
scribbled as cryptic schemes, motifs
of death and propagation;
here the fruit of death dilates.

Arid courses interplay, rivers of dust,
graphs wrought in frost, dust-falls interpret sunlight.
A cat plays knucklebones with something grey
and we move into daylight:

for mornings the roads are chrome
and the sun is a citron stain on a limed wall.

 

© Trevor Joyce