by Stephanie Conn

Today or tomorrow the snow will melt.
                                 Marina Tsvetayeva

All it took
was a light dusting of snow
to transform the concrete slabs
in the yard into the tops of Roman heads,
crowned with laurel leaves.

The senate meet
to discuss the progress made,
the pipes channelling waste out of the city,
the water, siphoned in from some distant valley
lounging, as if in steaming baths, between the hills.

I follow their roads
out into the countryside; green cassias
gather by the stream where the air is thick
with saffron and the keeper, busy with his bees,
sprinkles dust to count the kings.

Cow–dung smeared on fennel–stems
congeals in the blistering sun, and honey
starts to bubble in the glutted combs.
Is that Virgil standing by the hives,
his breath heavy with the scent of thyme?

The snow is already melting and tomorrow
I will kneel on the cold stone and prepare
to plant pollen–rich flowers
in readiness, along
the border wall.

by Brian Kirk

Travelling in hope, a child mother stares at her phone
willing it to ring; she lays her head on the pane,
surrenders to the squalor while her sallow baby sleeps,
indifferent to the sick and indigent clamouring at the doors
bathed in the orange sodium glare.

It is too late to be abroad in the city where we are all
equally blessed and cursed; barely able, biddable,
eyes shut tight against the light, ears deafened by
the raucous laughter learned in pubs.

City lights can’t hide the shapes of bodies cowering
as we pass; bus shelters harbour the hospitals’ surfeit,
doorways house the hostels’ detritus,
beggars own the sweepings of the street.

Inchicore passed, the girl is losing patience as we stall
between St. Michael’s and the South Circular Road;
on Camden Street, in traffic at a crawl, she grips
the handle of the pram but does not stand;
the doors hiss open, close, another wave of souls
tramp down the stairs.

I swallow bile and wish her phone would ring. I wish
the bus would turn around, but know we can’t go back;
over the intercom the driver counsels and cajoles:
put out those cigarettes, we’re almost there.
I think: We’re almost home.

by Brian Kirk

In some parts of the world before the feasting starts,
before the drinks are poured, a libation for the dead
is spilled on arid ground. Some people value those
who came before, but we know better.
Old stories are nothing more than wives’ tales
and when we perish we rot in the ground,
go back to nature in the meanest way.
At funerals the one least present is always
the deceased; we do not see the dead among us,
guiding us, reminding us of who we are
and where we’re from. We eat and drink,
laugh and kiss, lives flavoured by our loss,
all aches and joys endured or relished
in the shadow of a closing door.

by John MacKenna

Suddenly there is sky where no sky was before,
the branches form these unexpected scratches,
their leaves gouged overnight.

And crows trough down, slashed remnants of dark cloud,
their wings blown shapeless as they sink,
on sudden squalls hard out of the gusting east.

Heads low, they graze the small, secluded field,
below a winter ditch,
their backs hunched taut against a raw and bladed sleet.