Paul Perry

The gate to Mulcahy's farm is crooked,
sinking into infirm soil like a ship
from the Spanish Armada if you like,
forged and felled in some dark cave

to find itself jaded with flaking eroded gilt
leaving the striations, prison-like,
shaded a coppery green. A gate without
a handle and unlike all others in any

neighbouring field without the dull sanguine
frame that swings to and fro like a hinge,
or a door itself to some other world.
No, this is no ordinary gate and there is

something majestic in its stolid refusal
to swing, something absurd even.
Perhaps this is another version of heaven,
imagine the bedroom it might once have graced,

this brass headboard, this discarded,
transported remnant of love's playground,
and look, two golden and intact globes
rest on either end, both transcendental transmitters,

receivers maybe of rough magic,
piebald love, communicating not sleep,
sleep no more, but wake, wake here
to the earth and imagine if you want

the journey of such an armature
of fecund passion, what hands gripped
these bars, what prayers were murmured
through the grate of this ribald cagery?

Imagine too the man who must have
hurled and pitched and stabbed
this frame into the ground, in a dark rain of course
after his wife had died, her passing to us unknown

though you know this
that there must have been some act
of violence within this frame-work,
some awful, regrettable pattern caught

in the form of what, wind rushing through a brass
headboard, an exclamation point to the querulous
division of fields, could we be talking border-country,
and the broken, airy, moss-eaten stone walls.

Think about when the farmer died and the farm
was sold, think about what happened the field, empty
of its cows, still with its stones and grey soil,
maybe this is Monaghan,

maybe some day it, the brass headboard
you are looking at now, will be sold
to an antiquarian in a Dublin shop,
brought there on a traveler's horse and cart,

not smelted down or disassembled, but sold
to a shop where some lady with a wallet
will buy the thing, the elegant shabbery before you
that is the gate to Mulcahy's farm. As for the bed

itself, we can speculate, let it have sunken
into the earth, or better still let the earth be the bed,
the cot, mattress and berth to this sinking headboard,
this beautiful incongruous reliquary of misplaced passion.
...

That was my last year in Florida,
illegal and thinking of marriage
as one way to stay. Sleepless nights
of argument and indecision. And

to keep us going I worked a cash job
at an orchid farm. Long hours in
the sun, poor in paradise, the heat
on my back, drilling for a living.

I worked with a Mexican man.
My man Victor, the orchid keeper
called him. Friendly and amused
at the affluent couples who came

to purchase the rich, ornate dreams.
We buried a dead owl together.
I remember that. And my body aching
in the sun. Floating home to argue.

What we were doing I was told
was wintering. Getting ready for
the cold, its indiscretion, its disregard.
Nailing sheets of plastic onto a wooden

frame, hammering, drilling, and sweating
to protect the fragile flowers
and their steel interiors, their
engineered hearts and worth.

That is already a long time ago.
Its contradictions apparent.
Wintering in sunshine. The past
still growing towards the light.

I think of them now as some sort
of emblem of that past, ghostly
orchids shedding their gracious
petals, as we winter here ourselves,

batten down the hatches and wait
for whatever storm is coming, whatever
calamity the cold has to offer us
in the same way the orchids do,

I suppose, waiting through winter
to emerge with budding, fantastical
and colourful insistence to wake and
remind us to be nothing less than amazed.
...

for Rita Duffy
On the tip of her tongue

She's . . .

Don't think of melting

Pools along the way
A river

Think swimmers

Shipbuilding

On the long finger

She's . . .

Don't say it

Stop making sense

She's . . .

Towing an iceberg to Belfast

By a horse and cart

In wheelbarrows

A berg
A mountain
A mountain of ice

Read:

All poetry is performance
All poetry is L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

Not the iceberg
An iceberg

Blue and . . .

By dreams
With dreams
In dreams
Amen

She's . . .

Towing an iceberg to Belfast

And gladly

To return

Return the scene of the crime
To its . . .

She's . . .

Towing an iceberg to Belfast

On the back
Of an old Morris Minor

An exploded artefact of sorts
From the Falls

We'll all be there
When she's coming 'round the mountain
Coming round
The mountain of ice
The ice berg
We'll all be there

Takes time
And money
Poets with money
Pleased to meet you

The latest craze
It's the thing to do
It's what we wanted
But never knew

It's like how come
We never thought
Of this before
It's real and imaginary

It's nothing like you
Thought it would be
It's better than sliced fucking pan
Or meals on wheels for that matter

It's not a trick
It's no one starving themselves
For entertainment
David Blaine meet Bobby Sands

Good night
It's God honest
Let's have it now
Straight and simple

And what of the ship
What ship
Ghost ship
Don't say its name

Swallowed by a bottle
Why not
Why not
A blue bottle
Buzz
And floating the waves

With a message
For everyone

Arrival time
Forever and some

Museum of ice
Of found bodies
Returned to their resting place

Thirty years?
Agreed

Here she comes
Thank the . . .

With the arrival of the iceberg
It is agreed
All poems are to be decommissioned

At last
The city
Exhales an icy breath
...

in the forest in the forest in the forest in the forest in the forest
where you were sent to eat to drink to sit and wait to perish
farther darker deeper into time my time no time your mother's
womb expelled and where I she anyway no one seems to know
but I do might have once before the other came from the forest

with rain with rain with rain with rain with rain amen
soil beneath her fingernails ice in her hair her eyes
made from November and when she touched me I
came to life and swore I had never known or begat what not
or they that cried and huddled and famished sent to

the centre the centre the centre the centre the centre
where the river ends and the voices stop and the moon
the moon it does nothing but announces night and winter
and lights no one's way because she will have her say and
you your body grows too fast and needs too much

of home of home of home of home of home
where I waited for you only to send you back
only to wait for you only to love you more than I could
only to hold you to save you by speaking your names
buried beneath with with with who who her yes

in the forest the forest the forest the forest the forest
...

desire's cost is soil soil soil
the house mirrored by a house house
buddleia cut down bees fizz fizz
a robin red breast flits and flies
where is my nest was that my nest
a cat rakes through the new soil
mine is this mine territory mine
this is your life fleeting who needs money
or a father who stays on the island
who needs what no more kids so
a radio plays or is it the jingle of the TV news
TV
familiar childhood darkness
your mother is cleaning and cleaning and
cleaning and cleaning
international disappeared day
clean
what - everywhere in Ireland it's no seasons
seven remain the technology is there
a little bit of courage is all that's
have to keep on hoping
breath in my body keep asking
disappeared people people who know
who know where he is
nine of the disappeared won't give up
and so my mother is weeping and
and my brother wants a lift
lift lift home
he talks talks talks talks to himself
and says says says Ireland is an everywhere and
the heart heart heart is a rotten fruit and
we played at sticks as kids
and
we played at sticks as kids
and we moved moved moved moved moved
remember that house where we were happy
happy happy then ran away yes yes yes remember it well
the pain has grown like an unwatered plant
changing growing into and out of the soil
where desire's cost is a farewell where one man
is talking talking talking talking talking
to the wind wind wind wind wind
to the water water water water water
to the hah hah hah
hah hah hah
to the hah hah
hah hah
...