Bull Island and The Sleepers – by Tadhg Ó Ciardha, age 17

Bull Island

The self is not the self,

Which alters when it alteration finds,

At least for the length of stained glass footsteps

Burnt into the pier of Bull Island.

We walk further north than the known warmth;

A white line crossed and broken,

My father’s words lost in the returning

And the horizon lying awake.

The pier faces the sea, rigid, with all the courage

That my heart lost, and lacks, and lies

Drowning with the cinders of the sea foam.

But paths wind and weave under waves

And into the marram grass,

Reaching brighter shores, never before thought on,

And rejoice in the knowledge:

The human heart is not a pier.

The Sleepers

From the upper deck of the number

Sixty-seven bus,

On a Sunday in February,

My usual journey home,

I saw them:

The sleepers.

A pair of sleepers,

Pale, through the condensated window;

A man. A woman. Nassau Street.

They huddled together

Beneath a shiny blue sleeping bag,

That was sprawled across a rough

Cardboard sheet,

Almost embracing.

I almost felt their slow breaths whisper

A warmness to the concrete urban air

And seem to calm a little; the hardness of

Constant and insomniac feet passing by.

A shopfront cradled over

Like a mother

Watching over the sleepers,

Guarding the dreams of two chiselled

And weather-beaten faces

That could not have looked

More deserving of sleep.

The bus turned sharp around the corner

At Trinity, on towards Westmoreland.

Seconds and Nassau Street is gone.

The bus sped southwards, determined.

Minutes and the city is gone.

An hour and I am home

But there,

I saw grey clouds on their commute

North, towards the city,

And I hoped that the rain

Would be gentle if it insisted

On waking the sleepers.