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">

The Roads, People, the River (Soured with Industrial Excrement) & Town:

What more reason for a bird's rapture
than in the silent passage of quiet people
whose dark labyrinth only comprehends them:

first night of spring; the wind
is white and full, the moon
is only a direction, without edges
or exact location in this long fall;

a radio speaks in a window's mouth
and it is not for such verbed symbols
working across the road's dumb ceaseless fall
their weave, their patterned maze,

that the beggar's hands are veined with lead,
his body without redolence of lilies,
nor that some windows lack familiar light now,
and flowers must be found, even in such snow;

by the distillery wall the vagrant's breath
grips on the frozen stone, the moon
is the white bird on his shoulder;
as sound, presence and colour, dragging

like golden ants upon their backs their own apprehension,
flock into his skull and make their nest, and breed,
what more reason for a bird's rapture?

 


© Trevor Joyce