Poem

AN OLD BOYNE FISH BARN

You should have seen the sea in those days,

wind smoke and weeping flares washing

ashore from the barrios, all those

hesitant evacuees, as tarpaulin stretched

along Beaufort’s Dyke and our drift nets

sailed through the Hebrides. Shuffling in pipe

smoke, scribbling a plume of grave longing

on the bones of a wax-bright dusk,

I stood to see the ranks at the fish barn –

open mouthed, open boxed, iced on shelf

after shelf – and stayed to inhabit

what remains for the solipsistic raconteur

who believes the weight of his vision

will dissolve with his last sigh. When I drag

a heavy catch out of the evening,

old weather, braced for meteorites,

groans like a dehumidifier and burbles

the gospel of faith and love and water.

Gerard Fanning