Edri Deserta
I’m driving to the Hill …
And there it stands …..
Edri Deserta
Behind the shallow Bay
A dull necrosis mound
Sharp quartzite with its shaley dykes
And mudstone time..
A craggy rise of slab and grass.
The road winds on
The Station flares it nostrils
Grey …now painted cream
With flora dangling.
… old glooms descend..like trinkets clanking in…
Dark castle full of dining room… .
The Abbey lies in ruin…
Shrill seagulls curling overhead…
The chopping sea and rain..
Binn Eadair….
They lived there once..but never I.
The house that had no door to let me in…
The rack and screw.
A ghastly vatican devoid of anything. …
I was left for dead by them
Long dead at sweet sixteen.
My heart
Without a pulsing shape.
Without a flowering
Six winters bone and grim
And then six more.
I see the memories
They speak to me in languages incontinent,
As heady as a shaken beer.
That steep Boreen
….indifferent meals.
A shabby sitting room.
….a lousy Christmas Day.
Tension in the High King Chair
He was a tyrant in pained gothic sitting room…
And Worry groans .. her nerves awry from years of King.
….and we…coiled round them like a broken chain…
Behold the colonnades of Lear
Grey curtains …flakey walls
No bells to ring…. no cheer… no song to sing..
No eyes lit by the moon…
Worm eyed effigies …the peering in
And looking out again
Thru’ tentacles of suffering.
A swim of fish …long gilled …. dead-eyed
From hooks and winter’s blistering.
And He and She are still
They sit like fossilising stones
In Kitchen chairs….
In sullen anti-social days
And unlit nights.
Within their minds….dull spoons
Bone handled knives caught on the wind
Asymmetry
Flights of insanity
Ticking off the years.
It was my fate to be a part of
Then rejected by
such poisoned murmuring..
Slip on the polished
Marble of their souls.
Grim reaper’s tomb
( Hic Jacet )…their little turf was grim.
Kristine Byrne 27th June…2014.