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NEEDING THE SEA
by Desmond Egan
in September maybe most that time
when the earth begins to take over again
something in me gets bogged down and
cries out for the grace of water
there's no need friend to remind me
about the countless whose lives are far from such luxury
about starvation and misery the latest holocaust
of those who never got a dog's chance oh
as I write I can hear the scream of
someone being carefully tortured while others
with their only life blindfolded face into
the high cement wall of one military or another
even the thought like that of Chechnya becomes
a kind of dying what that hitcher from the North felt
as he watched the blaze of his cottage
we all know about the houses of hopes blown up blown out
we all bump into the local alcos the druggie
youngsters their adult faces mugged by less than poverty
just off the O'Connell Street of our new towns
is the world which so many miss
realised for them you'd wonder through others
do we carry it for this mongol child that
bucketful of abortions in the sluice room?
I need the sea
my being as if on strike soundlessly cries out
to come on it high above the road I
want to stand on that rock which tells no lies and
feel the grassgreen otherness making the mind reel
see the wide slow gathering of a watershadow rising rising up into
the wash the rush the clatter spreading down a beach
hear the strangely comforting clicking of pebbles
I need
to be consoled by the rush of my own smallness
to swim my soul awhile in the pure space let it go adrift
where one wave can hide the shore
at times I need this deep
forgive me