Dennis O'Driscoll Poems

His grace is no longer called for
before meals: farmed fish multiply
without His intercession.
Bread production rises through
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Life gives
us something
to live for:
we will do
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My next poem is quite short and it’s about something most of you will recognise. It came out of an experience I had on holiday a couple of years ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m correct in saying that it’s the only poem I’ve ever managed to write during my holidays
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Ireland’s boom is in full swing.
Rows of numbers, set in a cloudless blue
computer background, prove the point.
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Tomorrow I will start to be happy.
The morning will light up like a celebratory cigar.
Sunbeams sprawling on the lawn will set
dew sparkling like a cut-glass tumbler of champagne.
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Forever some customer happy to sing along with the supermarket muzak, no matter how hackneyed or crass.
Forever the plangent sound of a motorcycle in the early hours, conjuring a world you once had access to.
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Time for sleep. Time for a nightcap of grave music,
a dark nocturne, a late quartet, a parting song,
bequeathed by the great dead in perpetuity.
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someone is dressing up for death today, a change of skirt or tie
eating a final feast of buttered sliced pan, tea
scarcely having noticed the erection that was his last
shaving his face to marble for the icy laying out
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The August day you wake to takes you by surprise.
Its bitterness. Black sullen clouds. Brackish downpour.
A drift-net of wetness enmeshes the rented cottage,
towels and children’s swimwear sodden on the line.
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After Miroslav Holub
It’s much cushier when it’s raining rabbits
than cats and dogs. The animals for experiment
should not betray too much intelligence.
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