Single-arched between the 13th
and 14th locks,
Spanning the strait Ulster Canal
Over a towpath platform running north,
Crowey’s humpback bridge is in the
domain of air.
Among
looming grassed-over pyramid drumlins,
The eye can find there grass towpaths,
A
milestone, two masonry locks, bollard.
The humpback bridge compresses
panoramic space.
On hot
days the humpback draws the sun even closer;
Fuses the
unearthly with limestone
Walls,
granite cappings, string course over arch;
We recall and forget through
soil-and-stone mindscape.
A thrust-thatcher’s tool, the spurtle
for knotting straw,
Corn sheaves being stooked on Farley’s
farm,
A Magic-Miles-in-Monaghan poster,
High hedges bending to the breeze. She
remembered.
A time when this canal of reluctant
water
Was already decades disused,
But before the railway faced erasure,
And stopped freighting maize to
Wallaces’ mill.
On this space divided by an ellipse of
stone
The sun one side, moon the other,
The outspread wings of flowers in the
hedge,
Sissy hugged them all goodbye to nurse
in London
Before the strata of memory slipped
away,
She told me old Ned McMahon cursed
Jesus-Mary-and-Josephs at her dad
For letting her go to nurse where
trouble brewed.
The pewter of a bulbous black cloud
bottoms out
Among shadows and reflections;
Memory-markers in lush Tehallan.
Remembered by things, so by things we
remember.
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