Part 32 (1/2)

Listen to the rain spit in new ashes As you heft a load of dust that was Magherafelt, Then reappear from your lorry as my mother's Dreamboat coalman filmed in silk-white ashes.

Damson

Gules and cement dust. A matte tacky blood

On the bricklayer's knuckles, like the damson stain That seeped through his packed lunch.

A full hod stood Against the mortared wall, his big bright trowel In his left hand (for once) was pointing down As he marvelled at his right, held high and raw: King of the castle, scaffold-stepper, shown Bleeding to the world.

Wound that I saw In glutinous colour fifty years ago Damson as omen, weird, a dream to read Is weeping with the held-at-arm's-length dead From everywhere and nowhere, here and now.

Over and over, the slur, the sc.r.a.pe and mix As he trowelled and retrowelled and laid down Courses of glum mortar. Then the bricks Jiggled and settled, tocked and tapped in line.

I loved especially the trowel's s.h.i.+ne, Its edge and apex always coming clean And brightening itself by mucking in.

It looked light but felt heavy as a weapon, Yet when he lifted it there was no strain.

It was all point and skim and float and glisten Until he washed and lapped it tight in sacking Like a cult blade that had to be kept hidden.

Ghosts with their tongues out for a lick of blood Are crowding up the ladder, all unhealed, And some of them still rigged in b.l.o.o.d.y gear.

Drive them back to the doorstep or the road Where they lay in their own blood once, in the hot Nausea and last gasp of dear life.

Trowel-wielder, woundie, drive them off Like Odysseus in Hades las.h.i.+ng out With his sword that dug the trench and cut the throat Of the sacrificial lamb.

But not like him Builder, not sacker, your s.h.i.+eld the mortar board Drive them back to the wine-dark taste of home, The smell of damsons simmering in a pot, Jam ladled thick and steaming down the sunlight.

Weighing In

The 56 lb weight. A solid iron

Unit of negation. Stamped and cast With an inset, rung-thick, moulded, short crossbar For a handle. Squared-off and harmless-looking Until you tried to lift it, then a socket-ripping, Life-belittling force Gravity's black box, the immovable Stamp and squat and square-root of dead weight.

Yet balance it Against another one placed on a weighbridge On a well-adjusted, freshly greased weighbridge And everything trembled, flowed with give and take.

And this is all the good tidings amount to: This principle of bearing, bearing up And bearing out, just having to Balance the intolerable in others Against our own, having to abide Whatever we settled for and settled into Against our better judgement. Pa.s.sive Suffering makes the world go round.

Peace on earth, men of good will, all that Holds good only as long as the balance holds, The scales ride steady and the angels' strain Prolongs itself at an unearthly pitch.

To refuse the other cheek. To cast the stone.

Not to do so some time, not to break with The obedient one you hurt yourself into Is to fail the hurt, the self, the ingrown rule.

Prophesy who struck thee! When soldiers mocked Blindfolded Jesus and he didn't strike back They were neither shamed nor edified, although Something was made manifest the power Of power not exercised, of hope inferred By the powerless forever. Still, for Jesus' sake, Do me a favour, would you, just this once?

Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone.

Two sides to every question, yes, yes, yes ...

But every now and then, just weighing in Is what it must come down to, and without Any self-exculpation or self-pity.

Alas, one night when follow-through was called for And a quick hit would have fairly rankled, You countered that it was my narrowness That kept me keen, so got a first submission.

I held back when I should have drawn blood And that way (mea culpa) lost an edge.

A deep mistaken chivalry, old friend.

At this stage only foul play cleans the slate.

St Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.

The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside His cell, but the cell is narrow, so One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked Into the network of eternal life, Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow, Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?

Self-forgetful or in agony all the time From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?

Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?