Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two November-December 2024
Private Eugene Cox, poems by Michael Farry.
Private Eugene Cox
killed in 1917 aged 20, commemorated by
a Margaret Rope window in Shrewsbury Catholic Cathedral.
Every night he beats at my bedroom
door, shrieks in that familiar accent
leaves bloody mudprints on the landing.
I know him too well, that Shropshire lad
whose parents looked west but proclaimed
their loyalty in tense times through sacrifice;
his redress, a stained-glass window’s life
eternal, kneeling intact before God.
Last night he was desperate, tell them I came,
he said. I pretended to sleep, unsure
where my duty lay. This morning his name
is everywhere. I do what I can, insecure,
fretful. I’ll show him this, tell him I know
nothing beyond these words, his death, that window.
St Mary’s Cathedral Limerick
Grotesque grinning faces of the west doorway trumpet
their familiar confidence over the compliant city
outshining the carved flowers whose calm perfection
is too common. Find the side entrance, toss a coin
in the box, stroll among the accretions of the centuries,
bits and bobs adhering to the basic cruciform structure.
The open books, scaffolding and parish notices assert
continued usefulness, alive and dead at the same time.
An art student’s ceramic flowers, coloured cousins,
climb the cathedral pillar, proclaim premature victory.
In some far-off century their gaudy wares may shine
amid the ruins of this serious consecrated barn, but now
admire this sly allusion to what once was on this spot
before hard-headed fighting men demanded structure,
proof of loyalty, endurance. It has endured, loyalty
flexible, flitting to the right hand of current power.
In brittle modern glass at the north end–prophet, priest,
shepherd–he stares down at his congregations,
awkward knots who wander, admire, photograph,
seldom pray. By the mercy seats they marvel
at the carved creatures, agleam with the slick of ages.
Down here too cockatrice and griffin lord it, but above,
light streams through the daily chores of holiness,
torture wheel, unselfish gifts, the writer paints a portrait.
Just before your final exit stand and survey it all.
The barrel-vaulted roof of Cratloe oak is what commands,
persists, sure of itself above the transient human clutter.
When the yoke is broken and the cut stone is rubble,
when the glass is deadly splinters, we’ll gather here,
a remnant, and slide that intact roof to the river,
upturn it, raise a doomsday sail and navigate a slow
voyage upriver to a sanctuary in Lough Derg maybe
or further north, drag all ashore and start again.
Visitor
Who knows why we travel.
The sky is full of wings, coming
and going, landing, taking off again.
She had her list of sights to see
A Mari Usque ad Mare
I was skeptical
but the clouds rolled back
and the countryside showed off
the eastern tulips at their brief best
and the western whins’ careless extravagance.
Even the rain, when it came,
was gentle and brief, a reminder.
If you are careful, bend low here
turn sideways there
you can travel back three thousand years
watch the solstice sun rise
imagine what they felt.
There she could still feel the tension
see the evidence, flags, murals, kerb stones
so she wrote the obvious on the wall
obvious but sensible. Peace. When?
The cliffs are dangerous, the limits
are carefully set out, the warnings clear
We do not overstep, the whole experience
is managed well, the food expensive
but that’s to be expected here.
I eat more when I’m worried
or feel a little out of control.
That’s my excuse.
I am a stranger in my own country
seeing things through the eye of a stranger
not for the first time. There is a freshness
in the May light shining on karst pavements
limestone plateaux, through glacial valleys
and river walks that it almost seems like a
new beginning. In fact it may be an end.
She lingers over the stable he was stolen from,
his manger, admires the bloodstock
grazing their final days in peace, recalls his end,
measuring the distance to the main gate, the hum
of the motorway traffic, built since then,
paragraphs, chapters forming.
She understands my tension at
the iron cottage, this collapsed landmark
begging to be consigned to memory
and my awe as I enumerate
the generations in Rockfield cemetery.
The week flew by too quickly.
Do we ever have enough time?
The Causeway, Limerick, Fairyhouse
are for another day, if there is another day,
which is doubtful.
“Do you miss me?”
© Michael Farry
Michael Farry is a retired primary teacher living in county Meath, Ireland whose poetry has been widely published in Ireland and abroad in journals including the SHOp, the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual, the Stony Thursday Book, Brittle Star, the Cormorant, the North, Orbis and Skylight 47. He was a founder member of Boyne Writers Group and was editor of the group’s magazine, Boyne Berries, from 2007-2014. His latest poetry collection, An Apology for Our Survival, was published early in 2024 by Revival Press, Limerick. His previous collections were Troubles (Revival, 2020), The Age of Glass, (Revival, 2017) and Asking for Directions (Doghouse, 2012). In 2023 he published a chapbook, Broken Pieces, with Canadian poet, Carolyne Van Der Meer, on their respective hospital experiences. He is also an historian and has published widely on the history of the Irish war of independence and civil war in his native Irish county, Sligo.