Gustavo A. Bécquer
translated by Thomas Feeney

Of those years left to me
I would gladly give the best
To know what you have said to others
about me.
And this mortal life . . . and my
Eternal life as well, if any
will be granted to me,
I would give all to know what you,
When alone, have thought about me

by Gustavo A. Bécquer
translated by Thomas Feeney

It is merely a matter of words
and still, after all that has past
between us, you and I will never agree
on who is to blame.
Such a pity that love
offers no dictionary
with which to determine
when pride is simply pride
and when it is dignity.

by Lori Powell

For a long while this place didn’t know me.
The rain came and went according to its own life,
the metronome drip from the eaves
stately with history.

Every day I was an exception.
The floorboards discussed my bare feet.

But sometimes in the seconds
between sleeping and waking
a swiftness caught me up,
as if I were glimpsed
in the corner of another’s eye, fleeting
and possibly important.

I took my cues from the late afternoon light.
I touched what it touched,
ran my fingers along the edges of picture frames,
and followed the bright hair on your arm
upward to the curve of shoulder.
Everywhere I touched a small knot tied itself:
clove hitch, cat’s paw, angler’s loop.

In the end what held was enough:
the rain, the drip, the floorboards,
your slumbering arm across my hip
pulling me into this place,
making me seem as if I were real.

by Eamonn Wall

Brick, mortar, frame and floorboard haze
Burst sunlight ancient airs as the Clancys
& Tommy Makem roar from sack store
wireless — workers rounding out racy tunes
with homespun lyrics germane to females
of the town.  Burlap by thousands lined
and mounded along driest dun wooden
floors, guarded by Rover, an old Red Setter
for whom haste is an outdated term.  Cold
granite of St. Aidan’s casts shadows
over work and play.  Every act is sanctified.

In the yard’s sunlit space men break to savor
sandwiches served with mustard hot
as a maiden’s breath inhaled outside July’s
Scarawalsh’s marquee.  Like my ancient
grandfather, men pull on pipes whilst
hocking hard, spitting still polite so long
as the actor is male and well-advanced in years.

For barley & salmon, there is but one short
season.  Each weaves to rhythms I did not hear
held snugly then in youth’s eternity.  Ears
float on summer’s breezes sweet and low.
The Slaney drums homeward spinning flow
salmon floating secrets we have yet to grow.

Graig’s tough men caress burlap sacks gently
as they will dry their daughters’ faces
with soft towels, Saturday evening darkening
into night, cleaned clothes laid out and ironed
for the cathedral’s early Mass.  I lie stock-still
amongst a wave of tired boys: flat on sacks,
counting joists, until stirred and shaken,
Graig’s Sack Co. becomes Dunnes Stores.