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The new calf

5/1/2017

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,
my arms are hurting. It's no use, my father cries
but I strain at the rope until my hands burn.
A nose appears: the cow could do all this herself,
the ears are out but my father calls keep pulling.
At last the glistening calf drops onto the dung.
My father unties the knot, slaps him into life.
The cow inclines her head and licks until he kicks.
Not a bother on him, my father appraises.
I drag across the yard to my room and my homework
Julius Caesar, the Gallic Wars, in a dead language.
The calf sways and digs at the udder for milk.

Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2011) You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop 2008)

Achilles in the farmyard

19/11/2016

He set down a round of ash
with exact concentric rings,
quickened his mind, swung the axe
and cleft the wood so cleanly the halves
stepped apart like dancers.

Ancestors

19/11/2016

We seldom speak of you in this house
where you stabled your plough horses.
You are that silence between sounds we rarely note.

Another dreamer

19/11/2016

The grocer sits and smokes behind his counter
- pock-marked lino top with tobacco burns -
explains to any listening idler
how to get rich, run a country, rear children.

The barn door

19/11/2016

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.

The blue guitar

19/11/2016

When the blue guitar came
your dolls had already
become strangers to your hands
slipping without complaint
into the lost corners of childhood.

Bodies in the machine

19/11/2016

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
like eager visitors denied admission
though a young ash had sprung up brazenly
in his bedroom, waving out the window
even while he snored, here, out for the count.

Dog Latin

19/11/2016

Canis lupus familiaris. That’s dog
in Latin, he’d brag. Too bloody familiar,
she always threw back, resenting his mongrels
who mocked her in their dog thoughts, she suspected,
trailing her as she stomped around finding fault.

The hairdresser pauses

19/11/2016

The hairdresser stands behind me,
her hands flowing over my hair.
We could be under water
in a glass tank, an exhibition
of absorption or of peace,
like the breathing of an accordion
before the first note is played.

The infant Jesus to his mother

19/11/2016

I watched you pick up a feather
out the back, beyond the shed.
You smiled at it then hid it
in your pocket with the others.

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Padraig O'Morain

I 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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