Paul Durcan Poems

Dear Nessa - Now that our marriage is over
I would like you to know that, if I could put back the clock
Fifteen years to the cold March day of our wedding,
...

I was reading gas meters in Rialto
- In and out the keeled-over, weeping dustbins -
When, through the open doorway of the woman in the green tracksuit
Who's six feet tall and who has nine kids,
...

Leaving behind us the alien, foreign city of Dublin
My father drove through the night in an old Ford Anglia,
His five-year-old son in the seat beside him,
The rexine seat of red leatherette,
...

The morning after the night
The roof flew off the house
And our sleeping children narrowly missed
Being decapitated by falling slates,
...

'She came home, my Lord, and smashed in the television;
Me and the kids were peaceably watching Kojak
When she marched into the living room and declared
That if I didn't turn off the television immediately
...

The doctor said to me: Your father needs a new head. So I said to the doctor: You can give him my head.

My days were numbered - broken marriage, cancer, False teeth, bad dreams- so 'Yes' was his answer.

Now I lie in my bed wondering away in my head What will my father look like with his new head?
...

Having endured the screeching for a full ten minutes (At first I thought it was just somebody being murdered Or beaten-up)

I decided to forsake the bed and look out the window:
...

J.J. Silk was true Free State gentry;

Made his fortune by a judicious admixture Of fraud and piety in the 1920's;

By 1930 had settled in the town of Nenagh
...

When I was a boy, myself and my girl
Used bicycle up to the Phoenix Park;
Outside the gates we used lie in the grass
Making love outside Áras an Uachtaráin.
...