Medbh McGuckian lives in Belfast, Ireland.

BASILDON BLUE

It’s all, I’m afraid, downhill,
The once-flower moon being on her back
In the completely lifeless street
As good as gold as the day is long.

There was a gap in the dream
Before the dream proper, the dream’s extras
Swanned around a table laid in the shape
Of a horseshoe, eating out of the palm

Of her hand. In the highly elegant
Goods lift, she kissed me with great skill.
My raw silk jacket got caught
On an ochre-coloured cloud

That raced past the house
As if the dream had been wasted
By the combustion of the dream in prayer,
The Saint Francis in San Francisco.

CORNER OF FIELD WITH FARM

The earth has done its time.
To think that she is dead, she who read
Lamartine in a dark blue net dress
By the dimlit window, and laughed
So overflowing with a ladle full of holes.

Because I continued to live during
These two months, brown-toned boats
Look appealing in partial sun.
I discovered a photograph
Of my beautiful sculpted daughter
At twelve, in an old box.

I had tortured myself to resemble what I thought
She desired me to be, stretched like wet gloves
Worn by a long journey. Between her
And me, from the other to me,
No word, no hand, shut doors.

She airs her grievances to Papa, even closer
Under the umbrella. It was as if he had shaken
My hand very hard. The beauty of an image
Born of us is simultaneously
The most self and the most the other,
She is nothing to me.

She is full of inner happenings,
The house does the rest with its full smell.
Her black collar folds like the waves
In her hair, her white twilights
Grow tepid underneath my head.

A PRAYER FOR CARNAL DELECTATION

The light proves that he is reading still.
Cover the little Indian boat on the mantelpiece
With a black cloth, or an orange cloth,
Or both, to be mystical to the point
Of absurdity. Like snow.

The owner drew a cross through
This golden up-to-date little prayer,
And now she sleeps in her own character
Who took complete control of your lips
And kneaded the moon into the shape
Of your head, to learn a larger breath.

© Medbh McGuckian