POEM:THIS IS THE CONCLUDING poem in a sequence, The Venice Suite, that no poet would wish to write. Its memories are unique to me, yet its voyage of loss is undertaken by thousands, sometimes with huge support, like I was privileged to receive, but often in isolation.

In 2010, my wife, Bernie, collapsed while swimming with one of our sons. She had no symptoms of ill health and no thoughts of death before death cruelly thought of her. I was beside her when she died from an undiagnosed ruptured aneurysm on a trolley in the Mater hospital in Dublin, still awaiting the doctor assigned to her.

I was numb with grief, and I have no recollection of writing poems. But, sorting through drawers, 18 months on, I found multiple scraps of paper tucked away: barely legible lines scribbled on envelopes that were not poems but notes left to myself during the first dark year of mourning. Reshaping them into poems allowed me to confront that initial grieving process and try to imagine myself into the different life I now lead.

These memories are unique to me, but their underlying emotions are not. Thousands of people articulate the emotions expressed here with greater eloquence in the silence of their hearts than I managed by reconstructing thoughts first scribbled down on whatever scrap of paper came to hand.

Three years have passed since a day of incessant snow

That halted at midnight, when I ventured with our boys

Through the unchained park gates opposite our house

Into a white moonscape untainted by footstep or bird claw.

Squadrons of swollen clouds impeded any moon or starlight,

Allowing an eerie luminosity to emanate from the ground.

Branches overburdened, benches twice their natural size:

Each everyday object transformed into a source of light.

The ordinary made wondrous: rendered gleaming at midnight.

We three raced home to try and lure you from your bed

To share in our witnessing of this miraculous spectacle,

But you complained you were sleepy, snuggled down,

You waved aside each entreaty as we begged you to come:

“Not tonight,” you said, “not now, but I promise the next time.”

None of us could have conceived that when the snow next fell

It would cover your grave for weeks, leaving us shell-shocked,

Mutely comforting each other as we mourned your absent radiance.

c

Two years after your death I have finally built our extension,

With six feet of balustraded decking, five steps above the garden.

Our sons have converted it into an impromptu amphitheatre.

Tonight its recessed lights are abetted by the colossal supermoon

That occurs each twenty years, when its orbit is nearest the earth.

Guitars and a mandolin have been brought out to accompany songs

Composed by your sons and their friends, interspersed with old tunes

You would love to hear, as lads pass around long-necked foreign beers.

We three have known grief; have carried coffins thrice in two years,

But tonight is serenely beautiful: this is where we are, in this moment

That cannot be repeated. You’d love to sit here, but if you were in bed

I would need to plead and coax you to get dressed and wander down,

With you protesting: “Not tonight, not now, but I promise the next time.”

c

Next time a supermoon occurs our sons will be forty and forty-one:

I may be a pensioner of seventy-three or be long since deceased.

I don’t know what or where I will be, I am robbed of all certainty,

Liberated from trying to predict the future or shield you from it.

I know only the single lesson we have been taught by your death:

There is no next time; no moment will replicate the wonder of now.

I feel you have moved on and I possess no desire to hold you back:

But, just this once, don’t say “Not tonight, but I promise the next time”;

Don’t argue or prevaricate, but let your ghost come and sit, unnoticed,

On the wooden steps of this moonlit deck that throbs with song.

Be with us, for the eternity of this supermoon, as guitars change hands:

See what fine sons you blessed the world with; what good friends

They have summoned around them with music and chilled beer.

Two years on and this is where we are: mourning you deeply still,

Yet moving on, as we must move on: our eldest finished his degree,

Our youngest immersed in college life, their dad in a battered hat

Joining the gathering briefly to sit and share shots of Jägermeister.

We don’t know where you are, but we are finding ourselves again.

I don’t know if ghosts exist or just a welcoming emptiness awaits:

All I know is that, if you were here, dragged protesting from bed,

You would love to hear these songs, these subtle guitar riffs.

So, whether your ghost sits here or not, I want you to know we are okay

As I call you back to be with us one last time and then let you depart.

The Venice Suite is published by New Island