Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I could paint from memory
the night they sailed into Cork harbour
bows charred, the lanterns,
the sky behind them still hell’s own red
and the men coming down from the hills
to embrace and conspire with these brothers in arms
for the pope’s cause
against milady over the water

the women edging along the quay, shawled, frozen
the thrill and awe of it caught sharply enough
to carry back four hundred years and hold us.
So the Armada meant family
turned aside to a clearer connection
my cousins’ pale eyes, black hair,
my grandmother’s high jet and silver combs,
the long clock’s brassy pendulum
whispering at her back,
her lisle ankle up on a stool

painting for us, the opening lines always the same.
Her mother’s mother, famous for the beauty of her hair.
The wayward brother, all night gambling in Maloney’s bar
inflamed with liquor and the chance of a novel bet
crossing the fields in the early light
bringing his cronies, all wild boyos
among them, Grady the son of drunkards
Connelly the matchmaker’s despair
and O’Hara, who once had the street women of Dublin
to hold up his pants when his braces broke
in a fight with a Deavy from Castlereagh
“And this crew all troops up to the house
at the heels of the brother, who with whistling
                                                       and small stones
persuades out his own sister, Carmel Marguerita,
who would be your great great grandma
and no sooner is she out of the window
than O’Hara, no less, gives her his good brown jacket
against the cold, and they all set off.
In a neighbour’s byre, her hair, plaited up for bed,
is let down and laid along the back of O’Donnel’s cow
and proves indeed to be the blacker of the two
and the brother pockets the winnings.
The warmth from the cattle, the mist about the doorway
and Carmel Marguerita, her nightdress hemmed with wet,
shameless in O’Hara’s good jacket.

I could paint from memory
panshions cushiony with floury soda bread,
the stone floors, the oak press
and Rosie O’Hara trailing back from the church unwed
sitting more than fifty years beside the range
“gone melancholy”. Word of her death closing
the thin yellow curtains of my grandmother’s house
the priest turning back the edge to watch my
                                                                  grandfather
out in the garden, planting cut potatoes
stooping too long over the furrows
while the aunts murmured about masses for her soul

My grandad that soft charcoal afternoon
his braces unhooked, his white lick of hair

his small glasses, gold-rimmed like Pope Pius’s
his eyes unfamiliar behind them

his hand brushing in the soil, smoothing it over
planting for next year, weeping for this ancient woman
and for himself on the way to school
seeing the ship rounding their headland
“bound for Boston” and understanding too late
his sister’s long embrace, the trunks in the cart
another girl going, this the strong one,
not to be trifled with, who came back,
with money and Jonjo Brennan
who was, it turned out,
a ne‘er do well from Connemara

While the tribe of us, bored in the gloomy house,
longed for them to open the curtains
leave the soft speaking and talk to us
If it must be death, tell us Dooley’s wake,
the white clay pipes, the fiddler,
the poteen and old Dooley
up on one elbow in his coffin,
not your man to miss a good do
Tell us the shades of ham and pork,
                                                    the best lace cloth,
the exact notes of the banshee outside
tell us the spanish lanterns coming in on the storm
show us where we begin and pass on the colours

I could paint from memory
Beezy Melody in her wedding marquee
one hand claiming the mayor of Boston
the other on the sepia table, reflecting
the broken curve of my mother’s hand,
a child held up to her father
at the barred windows of the Mountjoy,
chestnut bloom on the boots and belts of the Tans,
the night crossing with sturdy solemn children
believing the coal fields must be green,
their hair bobbed, dark eyes looking up
from my brother’s narrow face
in the front garden at dawn, the hail of stones
bringing me down quietly, so’s not to wake the parents,
his lame shirt in threads at the shoulder
and himself full of the fairground fight

Cousin Bridie who was, they said, the sweat
the devil threw off him, who made good
in Golders Green and abandoned the church
One priest among us, boyish in his grandma’s house
listening in a corner, eating licorice bootlaces
knotted together, coiled hidden in the bag,
his mouth clamped on the sticky connecting thread
a negative in his black shiny suit, his pale face.

Mrs Grady bobbing in, neighbourly, to judge the table
scandalising everyone by asking for gin,
us laughing, leaning on each other’s shoulders
when she’d gone, the better to aim for the throat later,
a still simmering in the bottom shed
the aunts bringing in the extra plates
flinging the cloth, flying it above wide boards
and loading it for us, a family feast.