Dublin Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Baggot Road and Beggar’s Bush
Chancery Place, Fitzwilliam’s Lane
Meath Street, Cork Street, Misery Hill
Gig wheels spin in spits of rain

Stoneybatter Road, the Spire
Folk from Wexford, and County Clare
Bride Road, Cuffe Street, Bachelor’s Walk
Buckos from Sligo and Rosslare

Abbey Street, Croke Park, and Cahir
Waterford and the Liffey’s banks
Here the world’s accents clash!
Boston bleats out Howdee! Thanks!

Shannon, Limerick, Liverpool,
Norway, Rajasthan, Killarney
Here to sample the Irish wit
Taste the Guinness and hear the blarney

Harmony Row, St Stephen’s Green
Fishamble Street, lush Phoenix Park
The restless ghost of Oscar Wilde
Strange assignations after dark

Platefuls of prawns from Dublin Bay
Artists, poets, drunks and dreamers
Cruises, buses, cobbles, crowds
Foodies, fashionistas, schemers

Here’s tattooists! Dolphins! Snugs!
Cow’s Lane. The bones of Strongbow, too
Malahide Castle. Mussels, Punks
Bretzel bagels and Irish stew.

The Jeanie Johnstone famine ship
Shamrocks. A leprechaun’s green hat
Pigs’ trotters, bog bodies, cold surf
The Book of Kells. A mummified cat

The words of Behan, Beckett, Yeats
Heaney and Wilde, Bram Stoker, Joyce
Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw
Such craic as theirs made the world rejoice

Mulligan’s Kehoe’s and McDaid’s
All teem with diners, boozers, chancers
Poets in search of Kavanagh
Stand at the bar with toffs and dancers

Gulliver’s Travels do not rate
Nor Ulysses with his wanderings
When Joy takes up its flute and pipes
On Parnell Square, and your feet grow wings

There’s Rock and Garage, Classics, Pop
The Haepenny Bridge has heard them all
The Duke of Wellington passed near here
Where Mol Malone put on her shawl

Theatres and cupcakes, Garda, hurling
An Angel, bullet-hole in chest
High on O’Connell Street she stands
Her badge of honour upon her breast

Wrens of the Curragh, long forgot
Wraiths, slink in shame from their turf dens
The lepers of St Stephen’s Green
Vanished, like mists from Gaelic Glens

Prick with a stick, Joyce statue, sees
A wheelchair user, bald and bleary
A girl in a leopard-skin print bra
A red-nosed dosser, pissed and leery

Hags with the bags, life sized in bronze
Immortalizing women’s need
To gossip, and set the world to rights
The crowds in passing, pay scant heed.

Gum-chewing pony-tailed young man
Bare ankles and his shirt well worn
Strolls past ‘The Chariot of Life’
(Or Mad Milkman as the statue’s known)

In dyed pink hair, black at the roots
In thong-toed sandals, toe-nails, gold
And purple shorts (her bum cheeks hang
Like melons, waiting to be sold)
A tourist steps, with heavy pack
To catch a show or ceilidh act

A tourist guide, her golden hair
As fair as crinkle-cut French fries
Smiles to her queue of skinny jeans
With resignation in her eyes

While labourers, bellies over belts
Dig drains where Trinity’s on view
As round the bollards and the fence
Mohawk-haired scholars push on through

Here dove-grey Garda watch the horde
Go by, their phones clamped to their ears
Like limpets, while two lovers kiss
An old drunk trips, tanked up with beers

Here Brendan, Aengus, Ciaran, Eamon
Jostle to find a nice coleen
Cathleen or Caitlin, Nora, Orla
Who’ll cook a stew or a nice drisheen

Rucksacks festooned with foreign flags
Are used as seats by owners’ asses
A tomboy motorcyclist vrooms
In bleached blond quiff, and huge black glasses

Full-bearded Moslem, acne-faced
Leads forth his offspring like Van Trapp
Sprinters and strollers, joggers, priests
Shoppers and stragglers, baseball-capped
All vie for right to hog the path
Where do they go, this congregation?
Flanagan’s pub? To work? Or home,
Hoping no queues wait at the station?

Jewish Museum, jails, the Famine
History seeps from the walls around
Viking longships, Easter Monday
Treasures above and underground

Georgian Mansion, & Bloomsday travels
Beat of bodhran in the Temple Bar
Darkey Kelly’s, the Hairy Lemon
Dublin’s the place for a wandering star!