Between Trinity and Heuston Station
Part I
The Leaving
Leaving through the old gateway
the enclosed protected embryo of Trinity
going out into the shape-shifting pagan city
where rain falls with little pity
on the inner streets of Dark Pool*
where clinging desperation
pisses on dirty needles that are hung
around the edgy body of a neoned gang
wiring for some violent entertainment.
Pass along, criss-cross the bridges
over the shadowed dirty river
slipping into shaded doorways,
waiting for the information
from hooded eyeballs churning
the silhouetted wrinkled atmosphere
to reveal (maybe) the chemical imprint
of a random bladed hand, waiting.
Part II
The Witness
In a laneway, a young woman,
wearing a dress all too short, walks away from
a nightclub, he reads her black-haired bloodline
while paying heed to the wanting man closing in behind her,
an attack in the making steps him out from shadows
and he becomes figured into the Godfather Part I
standing outside a hospital
hand in pocket, maybe a knife, a gun,
the drooling hunter, unsure, hesitates,
just enough for her passage to safety.
Part III
The Mirror
The circling seagulls know the accompanying
score of this vague outlaw
standing within the brave old cowardly man
who is shorn into leathery walking
the remembering grey lines
cobblestoned into medieval streets ─
his fearful inheritance mirrored
among the ghosts of Dublin.
IV
Arriving has no arrival
Sighted by the tidal walled-in river
footsteps upon the Croppies Acre
memorial to those who with their short-cropped hair
were slaughtered in the cyclical 1798, rebellion ─
nearby dreamed into a novel ‘reality’
the Anna Livia Plurabelle, there she lies
bronzed sculptured in a pool of water
the Mrs Porter trying vainly to escape
from Finnegans Wake
her implanted gaze gazing further
than further away into the nearby,
moveable, Seán Heuston Station.
*The name “Dublin” comes from the Gaelic “dubh linn,” meaning “black pool.”
Traolach Mac Chu Mhara