He
were forever glancing behind; I’d see him under streetlamps
as
he waited for the clouds to catch up. When
they did
from
his pocket tin he’d bring out the mother-dough,
feverish
with spoor-droppings, coo-coo spit, cobweb clots.
In
those days he’d bet an owl from her feathers, a bride
from
her ring, on a charm pluck the dimple off a hangman’s cheek.
The
night of the Ceilidh I wagered him for that sponge
of
unusual properties; it was said how a lame mare had taken
the
Arc-de-Triomphe after it was rubbed
on her tendon,
how
a tar-penny’s worth could save a woman in still-birth.
His
dice were no match, and he mulched into a dry, dead leaf.
I
took for the heather with two of the dogs. One morsel
and
the bitch gave birth on the spot. Them
were rabid pups;
in
seconds they suckled her to the bone. I drew lots with my shadow,
took
the flake of it to my lips; rotten marrow, fermented sweetbreads,
enough
to bring up the gag; that was when I heard my headstone ring
like
St. David’s bells on All Soul’s Night, saw my bones
sprout
from the grass in the tanner’s yard,
full of ghost-blossoms.
You
can leave yourself alone only so long. To the false dawn
I
was a pane of glass, the surface of a lake, either side of a hand,
but
when I lifted it I saw there were no hands that were not wind,
no
chambers in the heart but the clack of stones
they
drop in the well of the pockets when they fit the noose.
Commendation National Poetry Competition 2013
