We present a new sequence of works by Enniscorthy poet Patrick Kehoe.
Gare du Nord
i.m. Simon and Andrew Kehoe
If the day had been a hat
It would have been a straw-boater;
That noon of demis
And breaking bread
In high-vaulted Gare du Nord.
They were none the worse;
At the gentle mercy
Of automated doors,
Grimy windows,
Inscrutable ticket men,
Train-lines, crossings,
Unexpected tunnels,
Rumbling, black noise.
They rested their small beers
In lunch-hour light,
Loose-limbered
In station shadows.
One was happier than he thought,
The other storing things to tell
At home.Alert to any event
From out of the trapped dust
And the light summer air
That was storing their images
Strung on the line,
That would be cut in time.
Gone, the Old Steps
Gone, the old steps
And the strolling contact,
The pedestrian contract
In all the weathers of love.
In callow months,
October's owl-like withdrawal;
Now for summers
To go without, forever.
Forage only on memory.
Sandford Close
That velvet dark time,
Dublin. Lovelorn,
Without the rusty caretaker key
To the cold comfort
Of Sandford Anglican Parish Church,
Sunday evening.
Memory sheaves,
Desolate night, my solitude.
Coming down Sandford Close,
Under the moon.
Arc de Triomf
He wanted to fill in the spaces
Between the people who hung around
In grey, and passed underneath
The red-brick portal of Arc de Triomf.
Dead and gone, most of them
Or wearily on the way.
Who they were, not their names necessarily,
More how they were caught on box camera
In gritty, slate fragments.
The funeral expenses nobody reckoned with,
Paid in silent tears, terminal flowers,
Pulling the shade of empty laughter.
Life does not box clever.
An Old Wind Has Blown
An old wind has blown
All the good it is going to blow,
A flailing breeze tries to keep up.
On Carrer Marià Cubí you walked,
Imagined laburnum, fern and heather,
Their silent loyalty to the seasons
Slowly coming to notice, how they once cleaved
To the long day of youth. Calle Madrazo
You walked the odd time, hopeful morning
.Varnishing with fragrant eucalyptus.
Waking up to the frenzied day, castaway trails
Of dream fragments. What step of the ladder
Are we on in this grey season?
It is not yet spring, and the bees,
Probosces in the bells of the flowers
Along Calle Madrazo, windfall of petals,
Red, yellow, blue, white, spilling over
The wrought-iron gates. The junctions of Amigó
Marià Cubí, Madrazo, Tuset, Via Augusta
The field of streets, smashed light particles
Glossing the level sea.
Los Boquerones
Heavy meals they served
Behind closed doors,
In a dark brown ambience
Of tinto and black tobacco.
In the barracas on the outskirts,
There was little food.
Yet here the prosperous sat
And berated and jubilated
Toasted and flirted,
Joked and fulminated;
Dark tinto, Cuban cigars,
A frisky, sparkling cava.
Then outside, as though
Getting on quietly with it,
Asperity in the telegraph wires,
A thin whine of the wind.
Fosforito
More power to your elbow Fosforito
Wherever you may be
In the wide, clanging world.
Whether you be proud or casual,
Whether the young ladies
Trailed your every song
Or left you for dead.
The lamp light goes down
In Córdoba. More power to your elbow
Wherever you may be in the wide
Clanging, changing world.
Light, Passeig de Maragall
The city said 'Stay tonight'
Whispered it from the door,
And opened up the green spaces
To make lungs for air.
‘Stay’ was said, but better
You had said nothing in reply,
Kept silent in the vermilion evening.
Yet light exists on Passeig de Maragall,
Light, how we love the word and say it prayerful,
How we take its draught straight off the streets
Despite everything that hinders
We reflect in light, expect its leap
In stained glass, our eyes cast towards the hills
And light fired in its sky kiln.
Estranged
That night she was in,
And stood up to dance,
A sevillanas, a brief flurry,
A shielded wound, a muffled story.
A colourful dress whirling,
She was on her own, and in the company.
He played guitar while the others sang rumba;
And no-one thought for a second
Of the time passing in the bar,
Forty two years ago, in the city
Of the soundless moon, unspeaking clouds.
In the Clear
The Greek greeting from a passing woman,
A man walking, with the sun up,
Wishing you health and well-being;
The hen and cockerel stride
In the bleating olive grove
Picking at grass, burrs, insects.
The haltered goat stares
From his patch of orchard.
Morning on Zakynthos, before
The big sun, braying birds
Berating the dawn.
The sea glimmers, dazzles;
The air is cool with the trim leavings
Of night, the day, proper in its attitude
For a brief time, not belligerent,
And you walk in the clear.
About the author: Patrick Kehoe was born in 1956 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford. His debut poetry collection, Its Words You Want (Salmon Poetry, 2011) was followed by The Cask of Moonlight (Dedalus Press, 2014) and Places to Sleep (Salmon Poetry, 2018). An album written in collaboration with Sonny Condell, Seize the Day was released in 2017. A new poetry collection is set for release in 2024.
