Irish Pages LTD

FootprintsAuthor(s): Gary AllenSource: Irish Pages, Vol. 3, No. 2, The Home Place (2006), pp. 59-60Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30057411 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:07

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 support@jstor.org.

.

Irish Pages LTD is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Pages.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:07:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE BONE HOUSE & OTHER POEMS

FOOTPRINTS

Gary Allen

And I too was blind before I realised it -

where were the flashing lights, the thunderous awe

my grandfather saw as he came across the fields after a late night game of cards?

It is in the quietness that we open our eyes:

they rise around me

saying, Why have you forgotten us?

the pale-faced boy at the back of the room who was always at the back of the room

now fills it with his heart and gives each of us the hole that killed him

we children bemused at his parents' grief along streets that have always stayed the same,

or that woman who lay across the bed her eyes white

the smell of her faeces filling the room like flowers a shopping-list twisted in her fingers

like a daughter's hair,

the friend who was summoned to his death

59

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:07:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

IRISH PAGES

by a grinning fool in a baseball cap sitting in perverse judgement behind him

and laughing - the small-bore calibre

rattling around my friend's skull

like a bird trying to escape:

they are with me now as never before

saying, All is our fate

and we the fate of all

purgatory is the early hours of daylight the forest clearing, the seashore,

the lightness of a soul that comes back,

a James who suddenly shakes himself free of the desert and rises to the task of small things

as a voice finishes preaching in the next room.

60

EQUINOX

Out across the fields, another winter is coming -

and I want to hide again weary of too much time and shorter days.

Bosch's men are at the bottom of the lane with their wheelbarrows and blue boiler suits -

happy children brushing up leaves,

they seem to know so much more than the rest of us

as they shout to one another in a language that is familiar, yet distant

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:07:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions