Two Poems by Jeremy Over
PN Review 121, May - June 1998
Here We Are
Dancing down O'Connell Street: 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.
I look happy there — don't I?
A bit less clear now — I think it's Dun Laoghaire —
children perhaps, walking out towards cormorants,
or maybe just cormorants.
You can see the view from my bedroom window here —
those are
tourists on the far side of the river, walking under blue and
red umbrellas
to give a sense of scale to the landscape.
This is St Kevin's stone prayer hut — that's his arm out of
the window
holding a blackbird's nest all through the spring.
Here's Kathleen, a local girl, her face being
whipped with a handful of nettles.
This is a small clump of moss.
We stopped to stroke it for a while.
St Kevin and Kathleen again — here she is climbing up into
his cave
and lying down naked beside him while he sleeps.
Another story about a goose
and an eel.
He's waking up now and pushing her out of the cave
into the lake where she drowns.
Yes, that's right — the same arm as before.
This is the deserted mining village:
smashed quartz and the smell of wild goat.
This is what a tin whistle sounds like in a graveyard —
and now, by a waterfall.
Here are some of the rumours of the lake —
we took an early evening stroll before they all got out of
hand.
This is a question, after the rain,
by a clearing in the pine forest
and this is our uneasy laughter.
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Autumn Arrangement
A monk, a pregnant woman in the stubblefield;
Evening inflicts convoluted wounds of bird flight
Upon the shattered grave of the grandchild.
Black mouths blossom softly into the night.
The sister appears in wild fruits from the dark bed;
Laughter, hideous and stark, drops from the naked willow.
Inside the tree folded upon God's living head,
The eagles shriek with the lechery of yellow.
An icy wind will rise within the greenish moonlit room
And angels step hyacinthine from the bell's last echo
To sink, in sorrowful splendour, in the church-darkened
pond.
Bats seeth beneath benumbed branches in the crimson
gloom.
In the ruined hallway midnight rains on the shadow of the
father;
On the table a brown tree and two moons and a fountain
and a gong.
These poems by Jeremy Over are taken from PN Review 121, May - June 1998. More are available in the issue and across the back catalogue, accessible to paying subscribers.