the home place || harmonium
TRANSCRIPT
Irish Pages LTD
HarmoniumAuthor(s): Michael CoadySource: Irish Pages, Vol. 3, No. 2, The Home Place (2006), pp. 140-141Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30057435 .
Accessed: 16/06/2014 02:40
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THREE POEMS & A TRIPTYCH OF TIDINGS
HARMONIUM
Michael Coady
Early morning in midwinter. In a living room of silence I'm waiting for first light.
Impenetrable black outside holds garden, tree and sky. It's still too dark for birdsong.
In the southern sphere
right now it's height of summer and high noon
and deep down under waves the hills are alive with cetacean blues and rhapsodies.
Meanwhile the cat's switched on beside me; intense ears and eyes
taking in my grandmother's long dumb harmonium there in the corner.
A huntress, she leans intently towards whatever is seen and unseen -
the verdigris on reeds, the bellows that have not breathed in or out for fifty years,
140
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IRISH PAGES
some hint of far-off voices
choiring Latin chant for scented Benediction.
141
EASTER VIGIL, MASSACHUSETTS
After long rituals of fire and water, word and song, we emerge from St Malachy's into the dark, with snow in ghostly mounds still holding out
along roadside and fields.
Driving home she asks if we'll come with her to visit Michael on this night. We find the place and then the grave between deep-shadowed groves of trees.
Don't the moon look lonesome?
She shakes her head in disbelief, then stoops to light a candle
above the frozen ground and her firstborn, murdered five years ago a thousand miles from here.
Three times the lighter fails. We hold our breath
until fire catches and she can set down the little flame beside
the stone that tells his name,
his given years.
This content downloaded from 188.72.126.108 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 02:40:54 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions