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Irish Pages LTD
ChangelingAuthor(s): Gary AllenSource: Irish Pages, Vol. 3, No. 2, The Home Place (2006), pp. 63-64Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30057415 .
Accessed: 14/06/2014 19:31
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IRISH PAGES
fine boned horses gather at the hearth
big eyes stupid with running deep veins shivering in their necks -
what are you trying to say, my father that we could never speak of as you see me for a moment,
as I am, your son, and just as human, we were both young, as arrogant -
and then you are gone again, between spaces caught in consciousness and the organic mind.
Do you still see horses father monumental as stone old before their time
running scared and confused
through the wall-less confines of this room?
or are you already something left behind and I but a reflection in an unseeing eye?
63
CHANGELING
This is the uncle I did not know: I held him once, a dried walnut in the mind intellect less than a child
little hands, face, and thighs lost in baby fat
and brimful eyes, speaking for a useless tongue - Thanatos wrestled him into the earth.
The future would have saved you: sad crew neck, flannel shorts astride a great chair,
This content downloaded from 185.44.78.115 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 19:31:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
IRISH PAGES
always too big for the world.
Ships have sailed and floundered
carefully bevelled handrails and cabinets have rotted on the ocean bed -
brothers and sisters have shed skins as you are unchanged in your infant cries.
Now you wait among the stones,
having carried my grandparents across long ago, for two dull pennies
from the mouth of the child you have never known.
64
ON THE HOSPITAL BUS
Here is an idea, of bare fields without crows
barley or corn,
but the rain, and the wind, and the endless mud furrows to a lone tree that reminds us of something, of the third month,
containing a madness of our own making
like red brick - these Victorian buildings lights on though it is only afternoon
half-moons, stars, suns, of imagination talismans dangling in the locked windows
small round faces not bothering to look out on a world that is no longer there
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