Poetry

Spring 2008

 

 

Eamon Grennan

Neighbour

His rusting, trusty bike.
The tattered shopping bag.
His half-week's groceries
dangling from the handlebars.
His old jacket of no colour.
Stops for breath, goes on. Stops.

Remember twenty years ago
the hale man he was,
a voice shouting over
stone walls in a storm,
a scythe on his shoulder,
stepping from the 19th century

to make hay of a sea meadow
he can only walk to
once in a while now, leaning —
old as the hills, tough as nails —
on his bike: a silent, steady,
uncomplaining friend.

 

Vermeer's Reader

She'll stop being here
in a minute or two, soon
as she stops reading,
reaches again the end of his letter.

Light holds her
like a close friend, a lover
under the clock, as if
they'd grown up together, as if

it would never fade
or give up on her. The map
on the back wall
is as the world is, crinkled

gold leaf: precious world
that is all distance, all
longing, all
his words, his paper heart.

 

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