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Achilles in the farmyard
He set down a round of ash with exact concentric rings, quickened his mind, swung the axe Read More Ancestors We seldom speak of you in this house where you stabled your plough horses. You are that silence between sounds we rarely note. Read More Another dreamer The grocer sits and smokes behind his counter - pock-marked lino top with tobacco burns - explains to any listening idler Read More The barn door I shove the barn door. Half off its hinges, it pushes back. Its face is implacable, like the face of an old Sioux chieftain contemplating endurance, loss, my inadequacy. Read More Benediction Sunday tomorrow. The house goes still. Her father steadies himself at the basin, foam like January snow on his face. Read More The blue guitar When the blue guitar came your dolls had already become strangers to your hands Read More Bodies in the machine He must have put in his nights in this chair in front of the Bakelite wireless and smoked while nettles clustered in his front porch Read More The Calf Man Three or four times a year a van drove into the yard, the calf-man climbed out and unlocked the doors to show to my father, who pretended scepticism, Read More Dog Latin Canis lupus familiaris. That’s dog in Latin, he’d brag. Too bloody familiar, she always threw back, resenting his mongrels Read More The hairdresser pauses The hairdresser stands behind me, her hands flowing over my hair. We could be under water Read More The infant Jesus to his mother I watched you pick up a feather out the back, beyond the shed. You smiled at it then hid it Read More Jesus loves Angela It began on the beautiful day, that's what she called it, the beautiful day an angel stopped her on the Newbridge road Read More A Letter from John Morrin, Royal Airforce Base, Aden Khormaksar, 28th October 1949. The heat in this place thins the blood. The doctor says watch out for colds for six months after going home. Read More Morning blessing He flits from the butcher’s stall across Main Street unbuttoning his beige coat. The usual need drives him to Kelleher's discreet side-door Read More The new calf My father knots a rope behind the calf's hooves - only the hooves have come out so far - tells me: Pull! The cow jumps and bellows, the calf seems to resist, Read More A night out They have made the effort all the same. Spruced up in fresh, pressed clothes in the beige of the Corrib Lounge Read More Not talking Since the final fight, details now forgotten, when pride sealed up their hearts and mouths they have made their own mute liturgy: Read More Once off On a burning childhood day in that corner of a field where our small, slow river Read more The red heifer The river field sinks into the dark, raindrops drip from the slates of the cowshed, the paper sprawls across the kitchen table, Read More Salvation The doctor's pleasure on Saturdays was to drive out to the hotel and behind its ivy-veiled facade Read More Taking the plunge The boy in the photo hangs above the Atlantic like a drop of rain from the edge of a leaf, paused in mid-air between diving board and water Read More You've been great A bronzed man pirouettes on the TV in the corner for his afternoon audience Read More Watching you walk to work I watch you walk down the South Circular Road. In dappled shadows, leaves and sunshine you seem to dissolve into dancing dark and light, Read More With Niamh in Harcourt Street Children's Hospital The intravenous drip machine doggedly hums through the night, breaks into fits of frantic ticks Read More A woman runs along city rooftops holding her hat She flits past blackened angels, chimneys higher than houses, walls heavy with wealth. Read More |
Padraig O'MorainI have been writing poetry since around 1990. My work has appeared in Irish and British literary journals and has been published as a collection in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry, 2011) and previously in a short collection called You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop, 2008) which won a Poetry Business prize the previous year. I have an MA in English and Creative Writing from Lancaster University.
Books Published
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