Gerard Smyth Poems

for Simon

Our second son, the wanderer
has sent a postcard home that shows
the smiling people of Cambodia,
...

In the middle of the night her bark was one
that seemed to reach the point of ecstasy.
Fireworks and wind-chimes frightened her,
our little dog who lived through the
...

Grandmother never allowed the electric in
because it was that fearful thing
that killed her son in America.
...

Fellini recorded his dreams
in sketch books and diaries.
Dreams in which he saw his obituary on the page
and made love to glamorous Anita Ekberg.
...

It was the year of yeah, yeah, yeah
and hair the length of Christ's.
The ambling horse,
a dray-nag pulling a laden cart
...

On an evening that showed me once
how the end of August comes to sadden us,
I gathered up the fallen cones
in the corner of the yard,
...

for Philip King

After a few false starts, the harmonica player
picks up a bluesy melody or slow air,
a cracked tune or one that was lost
and found, borrowed and returned
...

Perhaps I never stopped to look
or all the days were days of hurry,
of running with news, running too fast.
...

The things we keep are not the things we need:
the red flag and porcelain horse.
A calendar out of date since John Lennon was shot.
Those heaps that grow in the attic
...

At the end of his life he called for
a cup of Pyrenees water
to cleanse his heart, prepare it for
its final prelude: the homecoming to Warsaw,
...