Leaving Brosna – Five ‘Love’ Poems by Séamas Carraher

Leaving Brosna

5 ‘Love’ Poems

“Give me the right of way
over the corn steps into your sleep,
the right of way
over the sleep path,
the right to cut peat
on the heart slope,
tomorrow.”

(Irish, Paul Celan, from
Fadensonnen [1968]

The rain won’t stop
though it may dance its hunger
a foot above the fields
at the now-cold-dark of daybreak.
These cows don’t give a shit, either,
and the train, this fucking train,
like all trains in our leaving
partly Jewish in its heritage,
but Irish too in
its numb statement
that nothing matters
merely one more anonymous me,
on his lonely way back
to work.

it is time to leave Brosna,
all the furies said.

i hear Mike Nicholson, in Glasthule
a corpse now two years old
“it’s all over now – but for the screaming“,
his ghost grins
for it was time
to leave Brosna
on the 7.05 train
– out of Tralee.

These damn fields are damp as shit,
even the roads have turned their back
on the day
and the cows continue to ignore
my best complaints,
this lonely lament
as if this is where words had come,
– to die.

The telephone tells me
i am a lonely old man,
a tourist among all threats
where everyone else is a somebody
crisscrossed with cold conversation
like a disease or a death
huffing and puffing
on the early morning train
– to Dublin.

This red headed woman hurls
her fury like a fire across
the station carpark.
i myself am a man of war
but i have no answer
no defense
to the complaint
of a woman
wounded by love

you scumbag
you maggot
you cheap lousy faggot
you’re a rat or a louse
or worse, a
conman, and coward, a liar,
bullshitter, bully-boy, asshole,
parasite, you kill everything
you go near,
i still hear her shout
miles away now, just outside
an Fearann Fuar,
this cold land
that bred me brutal
– without even asking.

It is a wonderful thing
to have this life,
but to be in chains
and beaten down
what can you say?

O, it is a wonderful thing
to move at speed
through the hedgerows and
these villages
naked as skeletons
all crucified now on
my lonely way nowhere
in a hurry…

…even with all this poison
i have drunk
more years than i can count
and still the pain tearing my head in two
this fear i fight endlessly
with weariness
just one more grim day
– in eternity.

But still
it is a wonderful life.
watching the streetlights
go out, like candles
into the dark,
– in Brosna.

In Brosna village
there lives a woman.

That’s all i’m going to say.

i was a sailor once.
i shipwrecked lives by the dozen.
And washed them dead or thirsty
– onto deserted beaches.

i was a stone once
a hard stone flung
far in a barren field.
i seethed to find
– a heart –
to repossess…

i’ve been many things
but i know now
on my way along
the still dark road
winding its way
out of Brosna

there is this woman here
lithe in form
with breasts pointed erect
as she marches off to both love and war:
that here is one more casualty
with no peace nor place of refuge
in our endless conflagrations.

It’s time to go.
I sit with my head in my hands
on the cold tile floor on Main Street.
The light won’t dawn
nor daybreak wake
no matter how hard
i try squeeze
the sleep from my brain
your words from my mouth
or even give a hint of hope
that the day will somehow make it
– like a child unwilling to be born.

i wonder how many mornings
like this
Basho saw break
on the narrow road
to the deep north of here
where
i know for sure, in dark despair,
O, Peter Kay had many,
on the late train from Ennis
in this curse-of-an-island
this alcatraz-prison-island
of a still-famished place,
our cruel crematorium and gulag
but blessed by both pope and bishop.

– Not swimming here now, my child –
but drowning.

But these are all dead men
and their voices can’t guide me no more.

i am a sad lonely old man,
(so she says)
without a guide now, i know
and even the angels have left me
to my fate
on this empty road
this desolate road
with its threadbare train station
at the cruelest edge of the town…

and then, love,
there was this one sweet
and O, so serious angel
i could have dreamt
(an angel with wings of fire
and a cutting country tongue
sharper than a blade)

angel, too, (but not like
this once-upon-a-time
and now-long-lost
guardian of my life)
at the crossroads here
in Brosna
saying
“…an old fuck like you
– don’t need an angel any more –
its all downhill
from here!”

So it’s not leaving Brosna
i mind,
it’s not even your cruel words
that chase me like a hare
beyond these lousy roads
no matter how fast i flee
or how far

it’s not the memory lost
of soft wet skin
like an envelope
i could post myself
home in

it’s none of these things.

It’s the vision at dawn
just beyond these farmers’ fields
that no one will harvest
the tears poised
in the face of endless rain
past the crossroad and first down
the stony-broke hill
the post office still closed
and all the neighbours dead
or safe in sleep…

it’s this vision, i say
this vision i’ve had:
that here we are all in Hell,
and there are no devils nor demons
just the two of us, alone
and for a fire
nothing burns more fiercely
than

this love we yearn for, so badly
tormenting us
– nearly insane.

séamas carraher

wretchedoftheearth2@gmail.com

Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, Ireland, at present. Recent publications include poems in 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, and the Anthology of Irish Poetry.

Cover image: Artwork by Irene De Matteis.