From Muineachán to Naarm

 

From Muineachán to Naarm

 

Kavanagh’s Great Hunger indeed

Moves a lonely man to tears

Not a farmer, me

But a gardener of concrete, heart & steel

Choppers fly over

& rev down Lygon Street

The wail of sirens

& I am cold

Yesterday evening, skint at the bar

I spontaneously sighed “thank God for women”

& finally my algorithm shifted

From male sport to female play

Arundati Roy, Toni Morrison, Sylia Plath

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Twice the poet of her droll husbands

On this we agree the genders are scared

Scared of violence

Scared of humiliation

Scared of real intimacy

But is it fear or shame that make it so hard to be loved?

& so Patrick Kavanagh & often enough me when I’m not high or drunk

Turns the clay like “a mechanised scarecrow”

In the hope of a potato

Or a pint of porter

Lonely yet lightened by the fertile imagination

Stirred miraculously by certain women in their 60s

Though older she’s compassionate & brave

In both categories a-roving has me meet her

So that neither is tethered to another like a slave

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.