Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One November-December 2024
Nostos, poems by Brian Kirk.
Nostos
Some are destined never to go home
while some spend whole lives journeying;
others can’t attain their fate because
their’s is a nostos of the mind. Last night
I dreamt I went to Station House again.
The place was silent, the lawn trimmed,
sills and eaves freshly painted,
gunmetal grey. The dash was stippled,
unscuffed by footballs, the drainpipes
shining black. I walked the lane into the yard,
opened the door and stepped inside.
I passed through empty rooms,
unable to move for anxious ghosts
who gathered there whispering the story
of our lives, the secret shame we thought
we left behind, the foolish hopes that lived
there for a while before they died, abandoned
and forgotten. Look, we are here, they said,
not to judge or blame but to take you back
to who you are, the essence of the child
who cried and cried but could not find
the words to make themselves be understood.
Wrong Side of the Tracks
Early Monday morning, sun shining,
station full of tired kids laughing,
joking, but muted – a two-mile walk
ahead of them followed by a hard slog
in the fields and glasshouses. Too warm
already for denim jackets, they stumble
on platforms, ill-dressed for labour,
hungry for pay day. Some won’t see
Saturday, let go by the farmer
because they are idle or careless,
filling bags up with stones
more than spuds. Others can’t stand
the heat of the glasshouse, acrid
smell of tomato plants in their hair,
on their hands; in dreams they haul
heavy buckets down endless rows.
Saturday morning, and voices grow louder,
the slagging takes off. The station master
herds them to the road like sheep.
At lunchtime they return, cash
in their pockets, bellies full of crisps
and sweets – they’re just kids after all.
Respectable families travelling to town
on the far side of the tracks pretend
not to see one lad holding another’s hair,
swinging a heavy boot up to his face.
Somehow he wrestles free, crosses
the tracks just as the train’s pulling in.
The station master holds him by the ear
until the guard waves his green flag;
they crush at the windows, laughing,
as they pull away, his nose bleeding,
tears streaming down his face.
© Brian Kirk
Brian Kirk has published two collections with Salmon Poetry, After The Fall (2017) and Hare’s Breath (2023). His poem “Birthday” won Irish Poem of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2018. His chapbook It’s Not Me, It’s You won the Southword Fiction Chapbook Competition, published by Southword Editions in 2019. His novel Riverrun was chosen as a winner of the IWC Novel Fair 2022. www.briankirkwriter.com