Seamus Carraher - One Poem

The Imposssibility Of Heartbreak

For Linda on May Day 

i

This is another thing i remember.

The torn edges of my life turning

into cold stone.

The words drying up and

all the birds flying away.

This is the law of my father's belt

multiplies

into a million police batons

and i am my self again

in a million

screaming

faces on the road from Phnom Penh.

Here is a country not yet born,

a light over Hiroshima!

a light undoing the dark side

of my own face!

This is a thing i remember.

The cold steel of your unholy gaze

entering my torn anus

and the headlights of a million

galaxies dipping their beams.

This is the cold place.

A refridgerator for my dreams.

This funeral at the centre of my heart.

A march longer than war or revolution

this march where we meet my self,

and you, love?

irreconcilable victory!

Here still, a million dialects spoken and nothing said.

This is a thing i remember.

Like the birth and death of singing.

i visit this place, like a tourist

obsessed with meaning

in my uselessness.

And i am turning, love

turning in this directionless universe

corroded with reptiles.

 

i am tearing the mouth from these teeth

that won't let me go.

This world is still spinning on a turtle's back!

i am sure now, in my amputated limbs, my being

with both beginning and end,

sure how could there be a beginning or an end?

Tell me then: how come i am this thing now?

This thing without singing?

ii

Love, you are calling and

we are calling and

this is a thing i remember

in my stumpless way.

My own face unfreezing in the

warmth of your being

and your tears holding what's left of me

at the kitchen table.

It's not the dark, nor the cold,

nor the steel,

not this thing, not me, not nothing.

It wasn't the pain, love,

nor this cold steel of eyes,

but the words, the words, the words,

"you like this, fucking bitch"

i use as oars in my chest

like a dead tree

crossing this place called home

for the last time,

unutterable contradiction!

Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, at present. Recent publications include poems in The Camel Saloon, ditch, Bone Orchard Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review and Pemmican. Previously his work has been published in Left Curve (No. 13, 14 & 20), Compages, Poetry Ireland Review, & the Anthology of Irish Poetry.