by Cláir Ní Aonghusa

i.m. Annie Moore Clancy

As I look out from the warren hill
My eyes are drawn from Galtee More
Towards that graveyard by the old school
Where you lie, your house of clay.
Your spirit strays about the farm
Visiting vacant shelters.

You take my hand,
lead me out to the henhouse.
An old one scratches your face
as you extract the eggs.
‘Cross hen,’ you say,
and I am stilled in my city fear,
forget to dance in my new, red shoes.

You fill a bucket from the tap
of the water tank,
your veined hands mixing swill
for clamorous pigs.
As they snuffle through their food,
I savour the smell.

Lastly, we visit the cart pony.
You pat him down. He snorts.
‘Poor old thing,’ you say.
Flies edge over his festering eyes.
We watch him chomp the thistled hay
with blunted, yellowed teeth,
no intruders welcome.

At night, you let me comb out
your braided, iron hair.
A stunning silver glint traps my eye.
Before you died, you said
you had to travel the long road
and would not stay.

by Lorna Shaughnessy

He wrapped each one carefully:
his father’s whisky glasses,
his mother’s cooking spoons,
lifted them into the attic to rest
among the tissue–wrapped hours
spent reading boys’ adventures
under the steep eaves
while rain spelled out the names
of far–flung places on the window–pane;
beside mittens meant for dusting
that turned into friends, puppets
named by brothers bored with their toys,
and the boxed incomprehension
of a boy still searching for treasure
who never made it to the island
or wiped the clay from the buried chest.

by Lorna Shaughnessy

Clocking in and out. That’s the bit that gets me.
That, and watching the clock, that huge clock
over the factory floor, waiting all day for the hands
to come around to five. It’s not like the hours
have got any longer, it just feels that way,
they pass slower now than when I was doing time.

They used to give you a watch when you retired and your time
didn’t belong to anyone else. There’ll be none of that for me,
just the usual factory horn to send me on my way.
They pay me to stand on the shop floor under that clock,
checking everyone complies with health and safety. Hour
after hour. In those machines you could lose a hand.

It keeps coming back, you know, the sweating hands,
the nausea, the clenching in the gut. Like that last time,
watching the hands and counting down the hours,
minutes — that’s never going to change for me —
even though I know the final moments on the clock
won’t trigger anything, there’ll be no bang. I can’t find a way

to stop the tremor in my hands, it wouldn’t go away.
The final moments and now we’re down to the second hand,
seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, it’s five o’clock.
It was never a case of running out of time.
I’m a supervisor now, that’s what they call me.
They pay me just to stand here and watch the hours

not running out, and people clocking up hours
in their paycheques, whole days wishing away
time, waiting for the hand to reach five. That could be me
too, if it wasn’t for what I know about the hands
and what they count, the mysteries of time
they can never read in the face of that big clock.

Supervisor? I was a priest of time, a master clock–
watcher, a surgeon who spliced the hours
into split seconds and dissected time
so precisely I left nothing to chance. Anyway,
that was the plan. Till that last time. My hands
started shaking. Master time–taker, that was me.

Clocking in and out. That’s the bit that gets me.
Times you’d wish for an accident, just to get away.
Hours of making sure no–one loses a hand.

by Aideen Henry

We are fortresses you and I
our fortifications, castellations and buttresses
not visible in the main,

not until the flowers and leaves
of joy fall away, arguments
and misunderstandings strip them back.

Then our sturdy forms are laid bare
in opposition to each other
and making no apology for it.