Irish Pages LTD

BeingAuthor(s): Gary AllenSource: Irish Pages, Vol. 2, No. 1, Empire (Spring/Summer, 2003), pp. 57-58Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30057246 .

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THREE POEMS

BEING

Gary Allen

The German shepherd sleeping in the sun is a stone dog

in my memory:

and I was always awed

by the shafts of light

falling across the disciples and a serving of simple fare

like the table filling the kitchen, the tin bath hanging behind the door,

the smell of broth and linseed oil.

For there is meaning in all these things, or was,

to a lonely child seeking permanence outside the absence of parents:

a grandfather's roosters, the withered hand of the old woman in the next yard

reaching through the wire, caked with excrement.

Then everything changes, and the moment becomes unsustainable:

57

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on still days the clack clack of bicycle chain

and the sough of plane over wood

helped me to understand the holding of time,

and the exact perspective of everything

ON THE FIRST DAY

Those were the days of hunger long hours stretching like an empty belly

to the tune of the rent man, clubman, debt collector

All my blood were broken to labour, when labour they could find,

grateful for fifty years of sweat

And sometimes there was nothing to chew on, to distract, to hold out for,

each laying blame to the one above

I took my turn on the wheel those eyes old with tiredness,

she gave me the last two cigarettes

and a white breast that was neither infantile nor sexual

hung useless from the nightdress

My youth was angry, impotent like the white frost on the council greens

58

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