Michael Coady Poems

I love the abandon
of abandoned things

the harmonium surrendering
in a churchyard in Aherlow,
the hearse resigned to nettles
behind a pub in Carna,
the tin dancehall possessed
by convolvulus in Kerry,
the living room that hosts
a tree in south Kilkenny.

I sense a rapture
in deserted things

washed-out circus posters
derelict on gables,
lush forgotten sidings
of country railway stations,
bat droppings profligate
on pew and font and lectern,
the wedding dress a dog
has nosed from a dustbin.

I love the openness
of things no longer viable,
I sense their shameless
slow unbuttoning:
the implicit nakedness
there for the taking,
the surrender to the dance
of breaking and creating.
...

How odd of my wife
I thought at the time
to pluck bay leaves
to season her stews
from a tree that shades
the grave of a girl
in Kilclispeen.

Mary Dempsey
knew seventeen springs
before they laid her
into the earth,
before the bay tree
put down roots

before my mother
and father knew
fruit of the tree
of life.

Sitting at table
with wife and child
I relish the dish
and acknowledge the guest
who is part of the feast -

you're welcome, Mary,
into my house
and you're more than welcome
into my mouth

for this is the way
the world goes round
from the first kiss

to the baby's milk,
from the first word
to the tongue's last sound -

bread of communion
we taste in the mouth
is broken in commonwealth
under the ground.
...

You don't realise until you're forty or so
that by then everyone of your age or more
is walking around with some old wound that's buried
back of the eyes or somewhere under the coat.

Even then you forget that some of those you pass
with a nod every day on the road took their hits
quite early on, though you may not remember ever
seeing them stumble or fall or hearing them moan

since that was before the water cleared to show
that wounding seems part of some general plan, with rules
that are not just bloody unfair, they're bloody unknown.
Strange how it took so long for the light to dawn

that sooner or later your own due turn would come
to take one in the shoulder or the gut,
entitling you to limp into the club,
a member in good standing, now fully paid-up.
...

Out of the deep galaxies
of detail and the blind ways
that we go and the light
or dark that shines on us

there is this measure of
the nitty-gritty impact
that I've made so far
upon the earth:

an unreckonable fraction
of a millimetre in
wear-down of polished
kerbstone, the first

on the bridge,
southwestern side,
after I step at half-past
midnight out of

Maggie Dunne's
in Carrick Beg
to cross again
(no record of how many

times in all, of which
no two the same
in one direction
or the other),

cross again that old bridge
built before Columbus,
on my way to sleep
in Carrick Mór

where the weir plays
when the tide's away
and sometimes
between quays

I'm pulled up
and asked where
I've come from
and where I'm going

by stars
that stand
on night-watch
in the river.
...

They never look up at the round tower,
the weathering angels of Ardmore,
nor out to sea for invaders or friends coming in,
nor do they ever turn aside towards
Michael weighing the souls, or
Adam and Eve about to fall
under the tree nearby that's chiselled in stone.

If you freed your mind for a minute
you might imagine the two of them
gazing out from the heavens some night
and deciding to glide down, making
angelic approach along the Waterford coast
and landing at dawn on the round
tower of Ardmore, for this was a place

they'd heard about, with its saint
whose heaven-sent bell came sailing
over the sea on a floating rock,
and the thousands who gathered each year
on Declan's Day to pray and carouse
and hope for a cure.

A bell tolled noon and from their perch
they saw a crowd wend
out of the village and toil uphill
bearing a human child
to be laid in a hole in the ground
with prayers and reaching of hands
and embracing and tears -

so never again did they spread a celestial
wing except to descend and tenderly
turn to stone, over that freshly made
bed among haphazard cells of clay,
among humps and hollows of time
and memory dressed
in grasses and flowers
breaking from the unfillable
landfill up on the hill

topped by the tower
which men at sea
watch out for
while there's light.

And there they are still, the two
weathering angels of Ardmore,
keeping vigil in a place
where Solomon adjudicates
between the women and the child

a place I like to go
whenever I can if I'm on the road
skirting the coast from Dungarvan to Cork

drawn by unreason to turn
miles out of my way
and touch a fable
of fidelity and pity

now that I've come far enough to know
that reason's a useful thing
to show the way
but only as long
as the light is on.

And there's the heart of the thing -
set aside from the main road,
the elemental grace
and constancy of stone,
marking the mystery
of flesh and blood and bone

for it comforts me always to know
of the angels there in winter dusk
with all below in the village engrossed
in a clamorous box of shadows,
their windows double-glazed against
whatever may come.

Under all seasons
the weathering angels stand
with eyes cast down,
reflecting on innocent earth

telling all I can't hear,
showing all I can't see,
waiting for what I don't know

through ordinary hours
or dazzling noons,
mimed nocturnes of moonlight,
manic symphonies of storm,

on the honeycombed hill
with the finger of stone
that points to the dark and the stars
above land and sea in Ardmore.
...

The day is now well advanced. And yet it is perhaps a little soon for my song. To sing too soon is fatal, I always find. On the other hand it is possible to leave it too late. The bell goes for sleep and one has not sung.
- Winnie, Happy Days
The piano reclines in the bar's back room
where in all of its nights and days
it never knew caress
or climax of any kind of sonata.
It's missing two castors behind
and so leans back at its ease
in a corner where drinkers pass
to and fro with bladders full or relieved.

On the piano and around the room
are eleven pots of exotic flowers
that winter or summer never
need watering, and in the bar are seven
more pots of the same.

Over it all is Ellen, who has stood
by an open grave in her time
to see husband and son go down
and almost followed them there
on the wintry day she collapsed
in the yard and was out for the count
two hours on her own. Following which

she fought her way back and after six months
dusted off pots of flowers and threw
the front door open again
to people and drink and singing

for this is a house where lifetimes
of tipsy songs have been sung
and a place for the singsong still,
while the laid-back piano with flowers
just sits in the back room and listens.

It's taken for granted here
that every woman and man
must harbour some kind of a song

and if you should happen
to stumble or lose your way
then you'll be forgiven,
or helped along if anyone
else knows the words.

On New Year's Eve the bar is full
with spill-over into the room
of the waterless flowers
and laid-back piano, with songs
all around and tactful calls
now and then for a bit of hush.

Ellen's behind the bar, with Sheila
and Tommy and Margaret assisting,
and women done up to the nines for
the night that's in it. Colour it simple

and sacred, this mortal occasion
of souls assembled to mark
the flux between all that is gone,
and all the unknown to come.

Outside, a steady downpour
advancing from Slievenamon

courses over roof-ridges, slates
and gutters and windows and walls,
streaming down Lough Street, gurgling
into dark drains and off to the river,
then on and on to the sea forever.

As the old year runs out
the back door's unlocked to let it go.
Open the front then to flowing night
and face whatever may come.

Under the plenteous rain
that descends on the valley
midnight strikes on the Town Clock bell
that has measured the hours
for two hundred years

and there, slipping in from the dark,
the poet from Ayr just in time
with his presence as all join hands
and rise to his song together with
millions of others elsewhere
this night of old acquaintance.

Then round the house an exchange of well-wishing,
embraces and kisses and tears
before we return to replenishing glasses
and normal singing continues.
...