Stone HandAuthor(s): Ciaran CarsonSource: The Irish Review (1986-), No. 15, A Northern Change? (Spring, 1994), pp. 110-111Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29735737 .

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110 IRISH REVIEW

Stone Hand

CIARAN CARSON

Last night I found myself alone, hemmed in by the Belfast labyrinth: It must have been the absinthe,

For everywhere the civic colossi were absent from their granite

plinths.

No-one walked the streets except these dignatories of bronze and

marble.

No birds warbled.

In the starlit dark the statues' words were amplified and garbled.

They spoke in lapidary images of Parliament and Empire That would not expire But were engraved in anamorphic Bibles, emblazoned with dark

rubric fire.

With hand upraised, with rant and cant and dreadnought step, they creaked

Up Glengall street. It was no crack.

They did not know the che sera of it, but only wanted to be back.

Back in the land of Nod and Wink, who was Caesar, who was

Vercingetorix? What the Index? What the Mummy? What the embryonic thing inside with thumb

perplexed?

Uncertainly, the clenched fist opened up, then curled itself into a

foetus.

It did not understand the fatwas. What transgression? What the crime? Who had mimed the under?

cover photos?

The golems contemplated it, its disembodied crawly writhing.

They asked it to put whatever down in writing. It said the wrong words, so they walked on it. The wall was on the

writing.

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POETRY 111

As one, as one God, as one regiment they heeled and turned and

moved.

The Word had not been proved. For God is multifarious, and sometimes panders to His little moods.

Back through the twilit dawn, they scattered like a fist becoming hand.

The Word was 'and', All poured out, bit by bit, in molecules of hourglass sand.

Everywhere, Lord Mayors are born free, and everywhere they are in

chains.

It's not by chance, For they desired the pedestal, they wanted monolithic brains.

Daylight found them at their adamantine stations, staring at the

skies.

With wild surmise I looked one in the face, and saw the future in the stone orbs of his

eyes.

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