AN OLD BOYNE FISH BARN
You should have seen the sea in those days,
wind smoke and weeping flares washing
ashore from the barrios, all those
hesitant evacuees, as tarpaulin stretched
along Beaufort’s Dyke and our drift nets
sailed through the Hebrides. Shuffling in pipe
smoke, scribbling a plume of grave longing
on the bones of a wax-bright dusk,
I stood to see the ranks at the fish barn –
open mouthed, open boxed, iced on shelf
after shelf – and stayed to inhabit
what remains for the solipsistic raconteur
who believes the weight of his vision
will dissolve with his last sigh. When I drag
a heavy catch out of the evening,
old weather, braced for meteorites,
groans like a dehumidifier and burbles
the gospel of faith and love and water.
Gerard Fanning
