They Are Burning Books in the Library

The crane steps through the hall,
webbed feet nervous on smooth wood.
It frets that it will trip.
 
Remains of wings are propped behind,
ribs of a memory of wings, bound with gauze.
It lifts its toes.
 
There are broken eggs.
Somewhere the cat’s asleep, stuffed on yolks;
police and priests are silent.
 
It snuffs at the smuggled chicks
in wooden crates that fight for space,
a thousand grades of yellow.
 
Feathers plucked could make a bed, wipe an arse.
Silly cheep, so quick to be stamped out,
erase the stain, strip a spine.
 
They could be pecked to death,
never reach the words. Chatter of complaint. Joy.
Bury the chick. See
 
that’s not enough.
Chicks must be burned otherwise
a cock, a hen, a spring. Eggs laid hidden
 
in darkest straw, beneath the dung.
The crane slips, crumples to the bed of down.
Bones snap. Beaks split. Gripped by a net of woven claws.
 

Jane Kirwan

in collection The Man Who Sold Mirrors, 2003, Rockingham Press,
ISBN 1-87346-89-2X / 978-1-8734689-2-0

 
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I Am Slabce

I am Slabce and I have 730 inhabitants
who all go to Croatia in August or stay in their gardens
and eat cucumbers. My one road needs resurfacing,
my river is a kilometre away and massages are available
in my town hall (actually the castle) every Monday.
I will call my country-music festival a secret
and put posters everywhere, even in Pavlíkov.
I am Slabce and do not trust anyone from Svinařov.
Each of my houses has crystal looted from the castle
and a linen napkin. All residents are called Novák
and only thirty of them go to the flower show
in the Kulturní dům, twenty nine of those
put their lupins in for the competition.
Point-one-percent are drug dealers and thirty-percent
are having an affair. The mayor is always occupied.
All my voters are Communist and voted for Babiš
except Mr Novák, and we are proud of it.
If you want any soil, or gravel, or sand,
contact my deputy mayor on a Tuesday and he or his son
will turn up on Friday week.
My river has many trilobites, my forests
many mushrooms, the mill by the Slabecký stream
has bullet holes and is falling down;
a Kalashnikov killed a woman, her child
and her lover so we do not go there, it’s haunted
and the nettles are nose-high.
I did have a pub, I had two but now we sit at home
with Staropramen from Tesco. My street goes
from the carpenter’s three wolves past the tree-man
as far as the ‘used-car’ collector on the road to Újezdec
avoiding the lake that my mayor says
‘is not his responsibility’. I could go on
but am a quiet place with little conversation,
I might look surly but check my newsletter,
it’s often delightful: deaths, marriages,
firemen get-togethers plus dates of the annual ball
held every second month.
 

Jane Kirwan

in collection The Goose Woman, 2019, Blue Door Press,
ISBN 978-1-9164754-7-2

 
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Mr Blatný Perseveres

He skips basket-weaving, writes wherever there’s light,
some privacy – a garden bench, a toilet.
                                        Mr Blatný needs this institution
 
needs asylum, needs it Styrofoam-muffled, away
from the piercing ding, ding.
                                                   Next patient, Room 3.
 
He’s not keen to go anywhere,
                                                      everyone rushing.
What he wants is nearer than anything they suggest
 
danger collapses distance, questions are fists,
terror a remembered tinnitus
– matron’s voice pitched as the last castrato in Brno
 
or blade of a skate. What can Mr Blatný do?
He writes to get closer,
“mixing it” to cope,
 
no point a new language without plurals, past, future,
he doesn’t need it sparer
                                             but dense.
 
It’s necessary, this cotton-wool protection
of English-Czech-French
                                             or to connect,
 
it moves the border to what he wants, holds off
deranged woodpeckers – the thugs, their bulky suits, blur
of Slivovic – their bullying summonses,
 
he transforms feeling.
Love needn’t start from the palate
or stay on the tongue,
 
he changes its origin in the body:
                                              Lásko, miluji tě shifts the heart
shifts him home.
 
For Je n’ai pas peur
he can throw out his arms,
away from his folded-in plea for sanctuary.
 

Jane Kirwan

in collection Born in the NHS (with Wendy French), 2013, Hippocrates Press,
ISBN 978-0-9572571-2-2

 
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Stealing the Eiffel Tower

She carried it back on the ferry
in Safeway bags. Convincing Customs
the longer girders were for catching
butterflies, she hid the WD40
she’d used to loosen the rivets.
It was bigger than she thought.
Two legs straddled the house,
the third beyond the phone box
and the fourth by Mrs Hussain’s
washing line proving useful
for young Leroy’s socks.
She painted it chrome yellow,
made the platforms revolve.
But even though she sat at the top
on a striped beach chair, offering
free baguettes and brie, no-one said:
You’ve brought a little piece of France to Peckham.
Dragging herself down the 1,792 steps
she suddenly saw her mistake.
It was a rusting puff, no passion.
She collected chisels, mallets,
fleece-lined boxes for the semi-precious stones,
bought a ticket to Delhi.
She’d bring the Taj Mahal to Burgess Park.
 

Jane Kirwan

in collection Stealing the Eiffel Tower, 1997, Rockingham Press,
ISBN 1-873468-50-4 / 978-1-8734685-0-0

 
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