Poem of the Week: Ghost Town

In fields, on the bus, on the streets
With laughter, and song, the ones you came home
To on the record player, Van Morrison,
An Avalon Sunset, or Bowie, or The Cure
A Saturday afternoon flicking through vinyl
In a record store … after school decompression,
On the couch, the shut door, twilight seeping
Through the curtains; scratched black frisbees,
All the pocket money on a single, Hazel O’Connor,
Or Ghost Town by the Specials, must have been
Only nine, the two tones making their way through Dublin;
Our covenant to the teenage years, these songs
Looking for a melody to express our loose limbed
Insouciance and make up for the stuttering
Sentences we could not say or write at school.
Frau Stuart, wer bist du?
Downloaded, streamed through to a memory
Of a long drive when you’re trying to find the station
In a rental, and all of a sudden, these oldies, not even
Golden flood the car like sunlight and you smile.

Paul Perry is the author of a number of books of poetry and fiction, most recently Jamais Vu. He is a professor at UCD, where he runs the creative writing programme