New Poems from Irish Poets

Editor: Seamus CashmanIllustrators: Corrina Askin and Alan Clarke

TYPOGRAPHICAL ILLUSTRATIONS: EMMA BYRNE

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Birthday CallMicheal O’Siadhail

Hello, young friend, I’m just ringing to say

I’m thinking of you in Melbourne,

curious to know how you’d spend a ninth birthday.

Of course I remember it’s always spring for you

but has it begun to turn

to summer? Are leaves still flimsy, see-through?

I thought I’d tell you how right before they shed

they blush, how I wonder

were this year’s maples ever so bright a red?

My old head’s noise on your young shoulder

full of spring down under.

Your voice crackles in delight at growing older.

Our planet whirls and keeps its orbit’s track.

Me here and you below;

you looking forward, me now looking back.

Anyhow, well done in making it to nine.

We’re breaking up. Hello!

Hello? Can you hear at your end of the line?

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ay.

My Family, When I’m AngryJo Slade

My silly sister squabble sings,

‘If I were a blackbird I’d whistle and sing ...’

If I were a blackbird I’d be out of here.

I’d be the only bird on the wing –

a lone migrator to an unknown land

not mapped, never seen, an island for

the dropped in and leaving soon.

No gods, saints, mystics, angels,

wise old crabs, archetypes, visionaries,

no next of kin, kind old gran, friend of the family.

No one I know or have ever seen.

Nope, I’ll jump ship, drown

I just won’t hang around.

I won’t ‘Polly put the kettle on’.I’ll hide – be a wheel in the garden

an oil tank overgrown with leaves,

I’ll tell the cops I live with thieves.

Higgledy, piggledy, powder and gun

hide in the dustbin or they’ll kill you for fun.

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The Day the Dalai Lama Met the PopeSydney Bernard Smith

In the cold Tibetan highlands, in the panting heart of Rome

two mutually exclusive gods have found themselves a home;

for east was east and west was west until the horoscope

ordained the day the Dalai Lama went to meet the Pope.

Thought Chairman Mao: ‘I wonder how their doctrines will agree –

of course there is no god – and if there was it would be me;

these religions must be desperate, but we’ll give them lots of scope

and we yet may live to see the Dalai Lama hang the Pope.’

The two eternal travellers converse, each on his throne:

‘Your Holiness feels well today?’ ‘Fine thank you, how’s Your Own?

I fear our worlds are teetering on the verge of a perilous slope

– should we consider merging, Dalai Lama?’ asks the Pope.

O come all ye true-born Orangemen, and admire the happy song

of two contraries reconciled, both right and neither wrong;

which shows beggars can be choosers, and unlikely pairs elope

– and where would the Dalai Lama be if Paisley met the Pope?

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