Tuesday, October 23, 2007

A poet protests (erratum)

The wonderful Irish poet, Ciaran O'Driscoll, whose work I admire enough to post in an inflorescence (my weekly Friday poetry posting), was not lucky enough to have my admiration match my typing skills. I left out a line. So I've corrected it and now post the complete poem here.


The Uncompleted Park

Someone who dumped a mattress over the wall
provided me with a soft landing
in what a gate crested with flourishes
of iron penmanship, its middle dangling
a heavy chain and lock
like well-hung genitals, defined as park
and my eye defined as uncompleted.

Saplings were trained to posts
by wire in shoes of a rubber hose,
but paving stones were told apart by moss.
There was no seat, sculpture or fountain yet,
only a wild grass tame enough to let
the wild carrot's occasional crown and stalk
stand out and indicate the depth of space.

Between the entrance and the bank
of the old railway, I collected leaves
to take home and identify in a book,
and now I know it was the wind
switching a popular from green to silver
brought to my notice the uncompleted park
on the city's penny-pinched long finger.

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