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Seán Body

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15th August

There are feast days and feria days,
we pick them out on the calendar.
Today, the Assumption.

Assume means taking for granted,
he tells us, but Jesus wouldn’t ever
be takin’ his mother for granted,

now would he? We’re ahead of him
there, for isn’t Jesus better known
than John Willie The Hill who’s the best

known man in the whole of Ireland
having been a boxer once
and a wild man on the drink.

We are children and words play
tag, haring in and out of our
understanding, no sooner one

thing than another. That’s the way
with words, he tells us, slippery
customers words, which is why

we shouldn’t assume, always make
sure it’s the word of God we’re
listenin’ to and not the other wan.

A slippery customer that other wan
with his false clothes and false
voice, like them fancy birds

do be imitating the words
out of your mouth. Ah a slippery wan!
And we believe him, every word,

look up when he tells us
to glimpse her, glorious and rising
through clouds of angels, straight

to the arms of her beloved son.
Ah the beauty of it, he croaks,
the blindin’ beauty of it!

Them attending her struck
to the ground in contemplation.
A good word contemplation, a God word...

 

At Omagh, after the bomb,
the child on the wrong side
of the street, as if fascinated,

contemplates
how her legs crossed over.

 

Page(s) 65-66

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