Rita Ann Higgins

God-of-the-Hatch Man
(for Community Welfare Officers everywhere)
 
 
Smoking and yes mamming,
snoozing in the fright
of his altered expression,
caused always by the afternoon.
 
Tepid water sipper, coffee glutton,
pencil pointer, negative nouner,
God-of-the-hatch man, hole in the wall.
 
 
We call religiously every Thursday,
like visiting the holy well,
only this well purports to give you things
instead of taking them away.
 
Things like scarlatina, schizophrenia,
migraine, hisgraine but never your grain,
lockjaw and wind, silicosis,
water on the knee, hunger in the walletness.
 
We queue for an hour or three,
we love to do this,
our idea of pleasure,
Then whatever-past what-past he likes,
he appears.
 
Tepid water sipper, coffee glutton,
pencil pointer, negative nouner,
God-of-the-hatch man, hole in the wall.
 
He gives us money and abuse,
the money has a price,
the abuse is free.
 
‘Are you sure your husband isn’t working?’
‘Are you sure grumbling granny is quite dead?’
‘Are you sure you’re not claiming for de Valera?’
‘Are you sure you count six heads in every bed?’
 
Hummer of Andy Williams’ tunes,
most talked about man in the waiting-room,
tapper of the pencil on the big brown desk.
 
God-of-the-hatch man, hole in the wall.
God-of-the-hatch man, hole in the wall.
 

*
 

The Did-You-Come-Yets of the Western World
(for Elaine Feeney)
 
 
When he says to you:
You look so beautiful
you smell so nice –
how I’ve missed you –
and did you come yet?
 
It means nothing,
and he is smaller
than a mouse’s fart.
 
Don’t listen to him…
Go to Annaghdown Pier
with your father’s rod.
Don’t necessarily hold out
for the biggest one;
oftentimes the biggest ones
are the smallest in the end.
 
Bring them all home,
but not together.
One by one is the trick;
avoid red herrings and scandal.
 
Maybe you could take two
on the shortest day of the year.
Time is the cheater here
not you, so don’t worry.
 
Many will bite the usual bait;
they will talk their slippery way
through fine clothes and expensive perfume,
fishing up your independence.
 
These are
the did-you-come-yets of the western world,
the feather and fin rufflers.
Pity for them they have no wisdom.
 
Others will bite at any bait.
Maggot, suspender, or dead worm.
Throw them to the sharks.
 
In time one will crawl
out from under thigh-land.
Although drowning he will say,
‘Woman I am terrified, why is this house
shaking?’
 
And you’ll know he’s the one.
 

*
 

Some People
(for Eoin)
 
 
Some people know what it’s like,
 
to be called a cunt in front of their children
to be short for the rent
to be short for the light
to be short for school books
to wait in Community Welfare waiting-rooms full of smoke
to wait two years to have a tooth looked at
to wait another two years to have a tooth out (the same tooth)
to be half strangled by your varicose veins, but you’re
198th on the list
to talk into a banana on a jobsearch scheme
to talk into a banana in a jobsearch dream
to be out of work
to be out of money
to be out of fashion
to be out of friends
to be in for the Vincent de Paul man
to be in space for the milk man
(sorry, mammy isn’t in today she’s gone to Mars for the weekend)
to be in Puerto Rico this week for the blanket man
to be in Puerto Rico next week for the blanket man
to be dead for the coal man
(sorry, mammy passed away in her sleep, overdose of coal
in the teapot)
to be in hospital unconscious for the rent man
(St Judes ward 4th floor)
to be second-hand
to be second-class
to be no class
to be looked down on
to be walked on
to be pissed on
to be shat on
 
and other people don’t.
 

*
 

No One Mentioned the Roofer
(for Pat Mackey)
 
 
We met the Minister,
we gave him buns, we admired his suit.
The band played, we all clapped.
 
No one mentioned the roofer;
whose overtime was cut
whose under time was cut
whose fringe was cut
whose shoelaces were cut
whose job was lost.
 
We searched for his job
but it had disappeared.
One of us should have said:
 
Hey Minister, we like your suit
have a bun, where are our jobs?
But there was no point,
he was here on a bun eating session
not a job finding session.
 
His hands were tied.
His tongue a marshmallow.
 

from GODDESS ON THE MERVUE BUS (1986)
14   Consumptive in the Library
15   Evangeline
17   Mrs McEttigan
18   Tommy’s Wife
19   Unnecessary Work
20   Work On
21   The Apprentices
22   Goddess on the Mervue Bus
23   Lizzie Kavanagh
24   The German for Stomach
25   Almost Communication
26   Middle-aged Irish Mothers
28   Ode to Rahoon Flats
29   The Long Ward
30   God-of-the-Hatch Man
32   Mona
33   Sunny Side Plucked

from WITCH IN THE BUSHES (1988)
37   It’s All Because We’re Working-Class
38   She Is Not Afraid of Burglars
39   It Wasn’t the Father’s Fault
40   The Did-You-Come-Yets of the Western World
42   Old Soldier
43   Witch in the Bushes
46   Anything Is Better than Emptying Bins
47   End of a Free Ride
48   Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman
49   The Blanket Man
50   No Balls at All
52   Some People

from PHILOMENA'S REVENGE (1992)
55   God Dodgers Anonymous
57   Every Second Sunday
57   Him and His Terrier
58   Reading
60   Philomena’s Revenge
61   Misogynist
62   The Deserter
63   Light of the Moon
65   Old Timers
67   His Shoulder-blades and Rome
68   Between Them
70   He Leaves the Ironing-board Open
71   It’s Platonic
71   Limits
74   Rat-like Dogs and Tattooed Men
75   New York
76   H-Block Shuttle
79   Trapped Doctor on Cork to Galway Bus
81   The Power of Prayer
83   Jackdaw Jaundice
83   I Want to Make Love to Kim Basinger

from HIGHER PURCHASE (1996)
88   The Flogger
90   He Could Get Radio Prague
91   Donna Laura
93   Higher Purchase
94   When the Big Boys Pulled Out
95   The Flute Girl’s Dialogue
97   The Trouble with Karen Reilly
98   Mothercare
99   The Quarrel
101  Remapping the Borders
102  Mamorexia
102  The Taxi Man Knows
104  When It Comes to the Crutch
106  Gretta’s Hex
108  Prism
108  Spiked

from AN AWFUL RACKET (2001)
112  Bare Bones
113  Soft as Putty
114  You’d Know He Had a Lovely Mother
116  Pater
116  For Crying our Loud
118  Anthem
119  Our Mothers Die On Days Like This
120  The Weather Beaters
121  The Fracture
123  The Clemson Experience
125  They Always Get Curried Chips
128   The Lads Said He Was a Sissy
129   April Fool’s Day in Jerusalem
130   Lucky Mrs Higgins
131   Our Brother the Pope
133   Hey Greggie
134   City Slicker
134   My Face Goes Scarlet
135   He Knows About Cars
137   The Sentence
138  They Never Wear Coats
140  The Visionary
141  An Awful Racket
143  Succubus and Her Sisters
144  Black Dog in My Docs Day
149   They Never Clapped
154  The Jugglers

from THROW IN THE VOWELS (2005)
160   Ambrose Had a Big Heart
161   After Dinner Speaker
163   The Liberator
163   Wasting Time
165   The Servers
166   The Cover-up
168   Grandchildren
168   Anto’s Inferno
170   The Real Mourners
171   Fugued
172   Throw in the Vowels
173   They Had No Song
174   Dry-mouthed and Melancholy
176   His i’s Were Empty
177   The Hedger
178   Return to Sender

from IRELAND IS CHANGING MOTHER (2011)
183   Ireland Is Changing Mother
185   He Was No Lazarus
186   Guilty
187   His Brazen Hair
189   Spectre
188   The Darkness
192   No Pity for Polyneices
193   Malaga O’Malaga
195   Houdini
196   The Builder’s Mess
197   O Sole Mio
198   The Fates
199   Chinese Notebook
200   Visiting My Father at Christmas
203   Nearly Falling
204   This Was No Ithaca
206   Ping
207   The Pledge
208   The Immortals
209   Fahrenheit
210   Edict
211   Borders
211   The Púca
212   Hasta Libido Baby
213   No One Mentioned the Roofer
214   Tongued and Grooved

from TONGULISH (2016)
216   The Middle Man
218   No End to the Amulets
219   Costa Del Dento
220   Mr Grave Offence
222   Shades of Truth
223   At Sea
225   The Gathering
226   Sinner
227   Caligula
229   My Claudius
231   Tongulish
232   An Octave Higher
233   A Field Day
234   Mirage
236   Spell
236   Pig Iron
237   The Party
238   Morsus
238   Glimpse
239   Chaste
239   The Odd Wasp
241   Primula Vulgaris
242   Audition
243   Testimony
245   Cryanair
248   While the Ear Worm Fiddled
249   The Search
250   She’s Easy
251   Whack
252   The Carer
255   The Mission
259   The Bottom Lash
260   The Extra Second
261   Flight
263  The Women of 1916
264   The Camp

from OUR KILLER CITY (2018)
267   The Long-tired Memory
268   He Sings Happy Songs
269   They Trespass Against Us
270  It Suits a Narrative
272  No One Ever Kisses You
273  Our Killer City
277  Jiving with Wasps

from PATHOGENS LOVE A PATSY (2020)

I  Pandemic Poems
280  I Must Wash Down the Banister
282  Cocoonery
283  Even the Con Artist Weeds
285  Pathogens Love a Patsy
287  Knee Deep in NPHET
289  A Beacon from Mars
291  A Few Morsels for the Mortals
293  Keep the R-Rate Down
294  Nothing Is Random

II  Poems of Isolation
297   from I’m Hanna Greally

III  Poems Before Covid
301  Homage
302  Scullery
303  Mimic
304  Sanctus
306  Tooth and Nail
306  Proof
308  He Fell through the Cracks
310  Oughterard-ery

from THE LONG WEEKEND (2024)
312   I Thought I Saw Saint Brigid Today
313   Coming Out of Winter
314   The Alphabet of Trees
315   Saint Patrick’s Day
317   My Mother Loved Me in Red
318   The Bees Are Coming
319  The Eyes Have It
321   I Liked My Father at Halloween
322   All Saints’ Day
323   All Souls’ Day
324   The Valley of Disappointment
325   Pleione
326   Sacred as a Sepulchre
327   Saint Stephen’s Day

NEW POEMS (2026)
330  Celsius
331   Pandora’s Cousins
332   Appetiser
332   Renvyle Swim
333   MRI
333   The Children of Gaza
334  Cicero
335  The Lonely Scanner
336  Unnatural Pleasures
338  The Gold Flake Gang
339  King Crab
340  Never Let the Light In
341  The Holding Pen
343  Anomalies and Homilies
345  Hector the Vector Is Living Next Door
347  Shop Around
349  Endgame