Devonshire’s Causeway Bridge

He used to imagine that the stone of its hush-washed hump

Creaked in the estuary silence. In the night-ache of exile

Its single segmental arch had floated on his memory,

A string-coursed sandstone image, fading like a photograph.

St Patrick’s Day 1952

He has the hurt of having to leave Dungarvan to find work.

He dawdles before dawn on Devonshire’s bridge, like Adam.

Night-gloom turns to ash and burns away in a fire-funnel of sun.

The alchemy of dawn changes the grey to pouring-honey gold.

Spring is here, sliding off the Cruachain like a green shawl.

There is a lilt to the melody of the Colligan’s water flow,

As if it dreams of the ocean miles away past Helvick Head.

Or the hookers that hauled fish for salting on the quays,

Or four-oar rowing-boat races on St Augustine’s pattern day,

Or a grief of gull screams ghost-wailing after trim trawlers.

The air is frigid with the grey-sludge stench of cowhide tanning pits,

And the ghosts of famine paupers going blind on the quays.

Later, near the weigh station he watches the parade in Grattan Square.

The good-grace cheering, the rackety rumble of cars, lorries, tractors.

Jim Cooney in his pyjamas lies in a bed on Maloney’s lorry.

At the junction of Youghal Street his brother Anthony smiles.

St Patrick’s Day 2016

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His sons tend their fat-fleshed cattle in Half Moon Bay.

The warm whispering breeze bids the green buds burst forth.

A lark tinkle-trills its scale above reed-grass in river-side fields.

The bay curves in tranquil depths to blue-green Pacific infinity.

Once again he is the shadowy silhouette on the hump-back bridge.

He has returned to the place of his dead fathers and kindred, like Jacob.

Between its flanking panelled piers he stands as the circle of sea

Seeps in and out of the bay laving and lapping the Cuinneagar.

In the county museum he found the mason’s language of the bridge:

Rusticated square-cut sandstone from Runcorn, panelled plinths,

Supporting lamps, squared soffits, and scrolled keystone.

He marvels at the green floodlit sheen of the cleaned bridge.

The harbour is a seashell magnifying the voices on the quays.

He watches a rising boat on a serene sandbar stir the light-mist air.

And the wind-rippled midnight waters light with dancing stars.

He knows the eye of the bridge was his eye to the world.