Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Irish Pages LTD
DustAuthor(s): Gary AllenSource: Irish Pages, Vol. 3, No. 2, The Home Place (2006), pp. 67-68Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30057418 .
Accessed: 14/06/2014 01:51
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Irish Pages LTD is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Pages.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 01:51:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
IRISH PAGES
behind the Parochial Hall where the youths loitered with boxing gloves and hurley sticks for a quick fumble of a breast in the smoky air:
the first stone, thrown in anger a dead star from another universe
that states, all mine are false with the sin of Worms, with language -
and my uncle holds out salt and bread that is bitter with finite limits
yet binding with thirst and vengeance.
67
DUST
It is the moment all men fear, deny, the soul and body separating either watching abstract television alone, late, or some evening leaning absent-mindedly on the No Trespassing gate to the Memorial Gardens -
and the voice calls into the animal bewilderment,
perhaps for the last time, Come forth.
This man stopped his Transit van on a country road, door open, engine running, he raced across a field he had never seen before in aimless terror, and when he could run no longer he returned relieved, but with knowledge.
Or we students outside the Technical College finding it funny, in a curious way, the woman on the ledge of the Church of Ireland tower
screaming that she didn't want to die -
she jumped, anticipating death.
This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 01:51:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
IRISH PAGES
My father, blue eyes never paler, in that lucid instant before they closed forever as though an unseen hand had balmed them with spittle one last time.
And he who had ran across the field could pinpoint to the exact moment from the waiting of his wheelchair and oxygen mask the morning the air exploded in fine dust as he pulled the old school ceiling down, his lungs eaten slowly in jest.
I too have waited so long in resignation that waiting breeds familiarity, and we forget certain as the world spinning as blood turning to devour itself, that the worm grows deep within the brain.
68
THE BONE HOUSE
1 So who lived here before us when the house was still whole
before brown sludge from the North Sea came back to float around the bowl
as we lay bone to bone beneath the beetled rafters
two birds washed in upon the shingle the rain making holes in the sorry roof.
Someone built upwards new wood for an old frame
This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 01:51:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
