after Adam Zagajewski
So much has come my way –
the postman drops the artist’s gift,
an ink sketch upright in my letter box.
What’s there? His own mother’s hands
cradling a green bowl, her face buried
deep inside: tender hunger, her last meal.
Later, the sun’s a found ball our dog chases
across the Iveagh Garden’s sunken lawn, over
the grassy hump of the disused air-raid shelter
in Merrion Square. And there, the two bronze
lions’ heads burst magic from Rutland Fountain –
water into this day’s conch shell, for too long dry.
Summer will come. Like that one, years ago,
my mother told me all about, her fist of coins
ready to clink into the meter of the dark church
in Rome. Late afternoon, in the middle of her life,
but how the light came on for just a few minutes
and she saw in San Luigi dei Francesi those three
Caravaggios – reminding her of the poet’s words:
They live in semi-darkness and suddenly there’s light.
Enda Wyley’s sixth collection, Sudden Light (Dedalus Press), has just been published
So much has come my way –
the postman drops the artist’s gift,
an ink sketch upright in my letter box.
What’s there? His own mother’s hands
cradling a green bowl, her face buried
deep inside: tender hunger, her last meal.
Later, the sun’s a found ball our dog chases
across the Iveagh Garden’s sunken lawn, over
the grassy hump of the disused air-raid shelter
in Merrion Square. And there, the two bronze
lions’ heads burst magic from Rutland Fountain –
water into this day’s conch shell, for too long dry.
Summer will come. Like that one, years ago,
my mother told me all about, her fist of coins
ready to clink into the meter of the dark church
in Rome. Late afternoon, in the middle of her life,
but how the light came on for just a few minutes
and she saw in San Luigi dei Francesi those three
Caravaggios – reminding her of the poet’s words:
They live in semi-darkness and suddenly there’s light.
Enda Wyley’s sixth collection, Sudden Light (Dedalus Press), has just been published
