Eamonn Wall

A Suburb in the Lower Midwest

Afternoons you cross the railway overpass

to hike avenues our wealthiest folk

call home. Houses story three for father,

son, suburban ghost; timbers coated,

none chipped nor warped, fescues fresh,

zinnias nicely spaced, mulch and sprinkler

heads quirkily acquiescent. Midwestern

spirits guide you through fine-combed

Kew Ave. and Cricket Lane, as long ago

in Ireland incense led you along corridors

to vespers. You have crossed from your side

of the tracks to interlope and bicker alongside

a Red-bellied Woodpecker busy in an oak.

Stopped on Wedgewood by a turning truck,

you take stock to count your blessings. Lady

Bracknell, everything’s so ravishing and dear.

 

Island Walking

 I cross the gangway onto Inishmaan;

when the crowd chugs right, I shift

left to catch the clockwise route

of ragged pagan and upright pilgrim,

I follow fogra to trá and airfield

skirting verges green, dewed; purpled

Crobh dearg/Bloody crane's-bill,

if I recall. To the east Clare’s karst

sparkles. Wind, I do not pray or petition

as I walk but stream from tarmac

to slate, turning another left, the beach

concealed behind a cliff of marram

sand, light drifting across the water

from the Burren to join me at the shoreline.

I strip, walk naked into the Atlantic

to flop and bathe. For days on land,

my head had been unsettled as a torn flag

tethered to a circus pole, I shook

at lunch, contorted left and right at night,

jumped at any object dropped to floor

next door. Cruciform and buoyed I lie;

gaze no longer wry, body tilted by the sun.

 

In Dublin Attending the Vermeer Show

Attend as the lacemaker attends, fingers

with eyes aligned; light soft tones shift

fall to shoulder to sky blue to beige tinged

table, to tousle of curl set in ribboned waves.

An amateur, I stand back, let all creeks conjoin.

As sun lends eyes to an astronomer’s globe,

strewn roses on the red-bricked path enhance

and world-drawing men we have known

guide galleons to Indies press-gang bound,

cartography a tool of conquest invented,

like Climate Change, by Chinese. Does

the woman reading a letter pertly engage

or is she blasé cool to her correspondent’s

news? As another lady composes, her maid

averts; a horseman waves toward his sister

as a second maid dips to sleep; in secret,

her lady entertains, as I surmise, an officer

who seeks her removal overseas that recalls

one tale from Joyce’s book of Dubliners;

the bone-tired milkmaid must engage cruel

labor till trade unions emerge to liberate;

I might weep for the lady at the virginal.

Last, light on the lady with a balance.

It is all we need to seek in this one life

of ours; as your desires and mine, mine

and yours & proper footwear for the road;

my own hand in hers my mother’s hand,

our sister ceased from tugging at the wind;

James Wright held open into light, my

granddaughter’s breathing as we walk

when fastened closely to me in her snuggly

sack; a winter’s night at home, “Wish You

Were Here” coming live from old Pompeii;

snow bending soft my ever-faithful junipers;

and you and I held in balance as we dance.

Vermeer, Vermeer, O My Heart, Vermeer.

Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting:

Inspiration and Rivalry | National Gallery of Ireland

 

Third Monday of January, Dublin Castle

Hungry for flight our tricolor

takes air before morning’s first rays

have roused the castle’s cobblestones

or pushed deep into shaded lots

like garter snakes unwinding out

from deep grasses and dark crevasses.

This morning I walk the city early

fearfully acknowledging ironies of clay

feet beating, hammering down hard ground.

All night I dreamed of you

touched those tender knots

behind your knees, kissed vagrant

signposts that line your back

pole to pole, track to track.

I am an emigrant home on holiday from the USA

where what once glittered is sadly burnished gray.

At a long table in the Silk Road Café

two men sit quietly holding hands:

I take notice of their Claddagh wedding bands.

Let freedom ring is the slow air of their display.

 

The Translator Moves Our Lady

My wife Martha calls out to the turquoise-on-metal

icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe: she seeks the Virgin’s

sage advice. A woman who shapes one language

into another knows that shifting an icon from one

space to another is an act of translation. Fraught or fertile?

Martha works for London and New York editors in her blue

and yellow refuge upstairs. She listens to a stereo, hearing

little breaths of songs, catching for a second or two the pitch

of a shadow holding to a bare white wall, the scrape of claw

of cat on fabric. From the air she plucks a waiting participle.

Repairing a cracked brick path out back, I shovel with a spoon,

tamp down quietly with my hammer’s side, add sand.

Martha, for I know well the timbre of her steps on tile,

is downstairs now. Mary, Mother of Jesus, she calls out,

will you be content displayed by the red hall door

where for years you have shone in greeting all, or do you

favor, dear Lady of Guadalupe, the cool, tiled hallway

leading to the parlor where you once lingered weeks when

tradesmen arrived from Hermann to level the kitchen floor,

all spaces assuming personality from you? Long ago,

Martha told me once, Our Lady of Guadalupe had breathed

hushed words to her, as one woman to another, along

Mexico City’s Basilica sidewalk moving, when she sought

refuge from harsh sunlight and a hardening urban life. Today,

standing at the back-door spigot in the shade, I hear Martha

hailing Our Lady of Guadalupe. I follow then the silence

of their dialogue, their four-footed progress forward to the hallway.