Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

City by Paula Meehan

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

 

 


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