We present a series of poems by poet Patrick Kehoe.
Much of Kehoe's poetry concerns the city of Barcelona, a city of memory and imagination.
Voices
In the front door with the Yale key,
Then the few steps
To what mother called the cross door
Giving on to the kitchen.
No handle, and opened by pulling
A small leather strap at the top.
*
Voices at the table, a laugh beginning
A tear withheld, pauses as tea is drunk,
Voices as though refracted through steam
In a temple of tropical air.
In the Houses
In the houses, which appeared deep
In the well of the streets,
Eggs were bubbling on pans,
Red, yellow and green peppers
Sitting loud and untroubled in the market.
*
We did not look up or look down,
Being young, we were caught unawares;
How nonchalant was the sun king
Incognito in his passage through,
Scattering largesse of light and shade
Before the rebellion of the peppers, the eggs.
Do Not Talk
Do not talk about any possible return,
You have been there when young,
A molten fire in the heart
And a white-hot burning,
To try and repeat is a dead circus.
*
The bar is dim now, and in different hands,
The few drinkers of Estrella Dorada,
The smokers, might be dead or gone.
*
The hours in their golden orbs
Twisted by the torque of time,
And a dark veil upon the señorita' s curious eyes.
Sagrada Familia
You made too much of it,
Your former life, the finger tracing a name
In rare snow falling on the city
On the street bench, bound to perish.
*
Sleet-speckled ornamental lake,
Frail figures with pointless umbrellas,
And the desertion of revered landmarks
As though winter were a servitude,
Blue in the face.
Young Man and the Pyramid of Time
Pristine sand and the sweep
Of hours ahead, in Blanes,
Sunday on the Costa Brava.
*
A copse of apartment blocks
Remote in the sun,
His voice failing
For lack of talk.
*
Breadth of the solitary day,
The sloping dune of hours
Before the train back to the city
And the youth leaning against
The pyramid of time.
Reina Elisenda
The bright flared morning
Crashes in on iron wheels
And screech of brakes,
The breeze from the vernal sea
Yours until the balm of humid nightfall.
*
Embark and travel further underground
Until light assails again.
Horta, April 2011
The corner hostel perched above the city,
An outdoor staircase, steps up
And watching stars out of Scheherazade.
*
In an ideal grassy bank,
Every deft motion on the field,
Everything would be accounted for.
*
The forested hills around and above
The hollow of the streets, dazzling blue,
Translucent April noon.
Bare Room on Calle Cervantes
Thin walls of veneer,
The place could come with
Instructions about how to open
A plywood box. At twilight then
To wander below
In the streets, and hear
The hectoring diatribes
From doorways, aspiring towards
The cliff-edge cry of Flamenco,
Winging grief and despair
From players who too
Might joke and smoke.
Two Irish Poets Reading Their Work: Patrick Kehoe will participate in a Zoom event with poet Susan Lindsay on February 10th at 6.30pm Irish time, in an event organised by The University of Missouri–St. Louis - register for the event here.
