Jane Clarke

After


Now that her heart is bent over
like larkspur after a storm,

she stays in bed past milking time,
pulling the quilt

tight around her shoulders
until her collie barks her

down the stairs
to lift the backdoor latch.

She kneels to light the cipeens
piled on last night’s embers.

Her bones creak
like the bolt on the door of the barn.

A cup of oats, two cups of water,
a pinch of salt –

porridge, tea and tablets,
a meal for a queen.

Every day without him
is too long;

she’s waiting
with the tired cows at the gate.


*


Pit Ponies of Glendasan


Hitched to an eight-hour shift
in britchens, hames and traces,

they follow the miners’ carbide lights,
halt under hoppers, turn

on a thruppence and lean into their collars
to pull the five-wagon train.

Low-set cobs from the Curragh,
a piebald and two greys, their hooves

fall heavy as hammers on granite.
They haul lengths of larch for pit props,

pneumatic drills, boxes of gelignite,
and, from time to time, deliver

injured men back to daylight.
The miners pat their necks in passing

and feed them windfall apples –
comrades in toil and first to halt,

legs locked at a sudden rumbling, a change
in the air or the rush of running water.


*


September 1914


The week before he left for France
we leaned a ladder into the apple trees,

picked Cox’s Orange Pippins,
Newton Wonders, Brownlee’s Russets,

laid them one by one
on dusty floorboards in the attic,

then planted hyacinths and amaryllis for spring.
We sat out after dinner

and talked of how we loved
this time of year,

when hollyhocks are past their best
but still stand tall

in copper, pink and cream,
beside clematis and the last of the sweet pea.


*


Mater Misericordiae


Still new to each other
when you found the lump,

we held our breath as the surgeon
marked the spot with an X.

A porter pushed your trolley
down the echoing corridor –

I stayed at the edge of your bed.
The matron asked was I a relation

and under the Sacred Heart lamp
I called myself a friend.

Later I searched for coins
and a pay phone

to tell your mother
you were back in the ward,

sleepy but smiling.
The rose-petal scar on your breast

was tiny, but enough to remind us
we’d already found what mattered.


*


Spalls


To help us grow a garden, my mother and father travelled
across the Bog of Allen and over the Wicklow Gap.

They’d have preferred to drive west to Galway or Mayo,
they’d have preferred a husband and children

but their daughter loved a woman. We’d have the table set
for breakfast: rashers, black pudding, fried bread and eggs.

When the soil had warmed, we unloaded shovels
and rakes, buckets of compost and the rusted iron bar

for prising out rocks. The back seat was thronged
with pots of seedlings my mother had nurtured all winter.

We worked to her bidding: loosen tangled roots before planting,
sow marigolds next to beans, sprinkle Epsom salts around roses.

My father took off on his own to spud ragwort or clip a hedge.
One day he spent hours gathering stones of different shapes and sizes.

By evening he’d built us a wall under the holly, held together
by gravity and friction, hearted with handfuls of spalls.
 

    10     After
    11     Butter for Queens
    12     Raspberries
    13     District Nurse
    14     Dressing My Mother for Her Grandson’s Wedding
    15     Given
    16     Becoming
    17     All the horses she’s ever loved
    18     Eggs
    19     All she needed
    20     Milk
    21     The Lookout
    22     The Arch

PIT PONIES OF GLENASAN
    25     Christmas Morning
    26     Pit Ponies of Glendasan
    27     The Pay
    28     Mullacor

WHEN ALL THIS IS OVER
    31     September 1914
    32     In the dugout
    33     The Game
    34     After we’re gone
    35     Bouchavesnes
    36     Priam of Troy
    37     Ling
    38     When all this is over
    39     Snow
    40     Pianist

YOU COULD SAY IT BEGINS
    42     You could say it begins
    44     Crossings
    45     Flight
    47     Family Bible
    48     When the sun

    51     The Dipper
    52     Lazy Beds
    53     skein
    54     Passage
    55     Wildfire
    56     Rowan
    57     Refuge
    58     Recipe for a bog
    59     spawn
    60     At Purteen Harbour
    61     Little Tern Colony, Kilcoole

    63     Mater Misericordiae
    64     The Key
    65     Spalls
    66     Her first
    67     Wife
    68     Ballinabarney
    69     First Earlies
    70     Shepherd
    71     Fences
    72     Thief in April
    73     Stepping in
    74     June

    76     Notes
    78     Acknowledgements