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Boa Constrictor                        Reprisal                       

Wooden Horse                        Knock

 

Boa Constrictor

 

It was the picture of Saint Patrick

driving out the snakes

that kept them on my mind.

If they were here before

what was to stop them coming back?

The one I had in mind didn’t even have

to cross the sea. I could see clearly

the big fat body of him that I last saw rearing

against the thick glass in Dublin zoo.

I saw the road from Dublin disappearing

under his muscular body as he went past

signposts, no need for such a diabolical fellow

to check where he was going

cleverly traveling at night, arranging himself

carefully in ditches for sleep by day

every so often, he might stop to open his mouth for a sheep like

the picture I’d seen in World Book encyclopedia

he knew where he was coming all right –

the village of Burnfort

I was there in the dark, the lights from the cars

travelling across the room in white bands

rigid with useless prayer

a knitting needle like a sliver of ice

clenched in my right hand.

 

Martina Evans

in collection, Facing the Public ,  Sep 2009,

Anvil Press Poetry, ISBN 978-0-8564641-2-6

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Reprisal

 

Never trust a Palatine or a Bastard –

and Ould Fritz was both.

When ‘The Boys’ went to Ould Fritz

demanding their guns in the name of the Irish Republic –

I’ll give you ammunition says Ould Fritz

sticking his gun out of the window

he shot Joe Bennett stone dead.

Bang. No more than he was a dog.

They wrapped his body in a sheet

put it in a ditch two miles from his home place

because the Tans were down to the house straight.

The Bennetts killed a pig, letting on nothing –

if the Tans found a corpse  

they’d be burnt to the ground.

Mrs Bennett, standing there, stuffing sausages

her seventeen year old son’s body lying in a ditch.

No more than he was a dog.

Those fellas going round the house

sticking their bayonets into everything.

Ould Fritz? Well he didn’t leave his house

for fear of the Boys, two whole years getting

everything delivered and everyone laughing

at the big head of him inside the window.

Of course they got him,

didn’t he have to leave the house for his sister’s funeral?

All the gentry assembled below in Askeaton Graveyard

Bang. No more than he was a dog.

Four black horses with feathers going one way

and the hearse going the other.  

 

Martina Evans

in collection, Facing the Public ,  Sep 2009,

Anvil Press Poetry, ISBN 978-0-8564641-2-6

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Wooden Horse

‘We’re like the Greeks in the wooden horse, here in the belly of the town, I thought, and laughed.’

                                                                                   Ernie O’Malley

 

If you meet anyone, blindfold them, they were told that and the men were smiling at the thought of seizing the barracks where an officer was starting to write a letter Mallow is a quiet town, nothing ever happens here. And it was true – at 2am on the twenty eighth, there was no one on the streets, everything pitch as they navigated backyards and barbed wire, put up their ladders against the high walls.  Up there, Ernie saw a toy town wrapped in mist and when they clambered inside the Town Hall, he laughed, thinking of Troy. He whispered the story to Dave Shinnock who whispered it to the rest of the men and they never heard such a good joke and a boy slapped the thick wall and said now girl, whoa girl, steady there and made a wind purr with his mouth as if he was rubbing down a horse but Mallow wasn’t made of wood, it was flesh and blood, like Achilles’ horses, Bailius and Xanthus who dragged their shining manes along the ground when they wept for the death of his friend.

 

Martina Evans

in collection, Facing the Public ,  Sep 2009,

Anvil Press Poetry, ISBN 978-0-8564641-2-6

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Knock

Coughlin… helped to keep all in good humour, and his droll sayings were repeated. He had been billeted in a house which had a reputation for being stingy. One morning the woman of the house asked him how he liked his eggs boiled. “With a couple of others, ma’am,” he replied.

 

                                                                                   Ernie O’Malley IRA commander

 

No one wanted Ireland free more than myself, don’t I remember as a child, my mother grabbing hold of us, making us lie down on the floor so we wouldn’t be seen by the landlord out for his day with the ducks in the bog and his gun broken across his arm, looking to quench his thirst with a glass of milk. I say! Very refreshing indeed and a big slick of cream stuck to his old moustache. Ah those days are gone, thanks be to God, old Pym would be afraid of his life to come up to Knock in his plus fours now. That’s what I was thinking this morning and how great it was to be able to open the bottom half of the door and stand out on the flags in my sack apron, the tongues of my boots hanging open with no laces. A brown cake baking in the bastable pot and I tasting the air, like it was lemonade. The sun was going across my shoulders like a warm wool coat as I walked over to the henhouse with Blackie the cat pressing up against me. And I was walking out again with six hot white eggs in my big sack pockets, thinking of the breakfast I was going to have with Diarmuid. Well, whatever turn I made to admire the heather blazing against the blue mountain, didn’t I see a crowd of them coming round the corner with the old rifles upon their shoulders, singing Oro Se De Bheath Abhaile and my stomach sank to the tongues of my boots. Coughlin, the first as usual, to smell the brown cake. It wasn’t that I wasn’t wishing them the best of luck the whole time and you might think I’d be worried if we were caught out by the Tans and burned to the ground and I am not saying I wasn’t always worried about that too, but to have to turn around and serve a crowd of men and make up beds and to have to pretend to be laughing away at their jokes. Oh God Almighty, I was pure sick of them all, then. I remember the first time they came and I was given a  pile of dirty socks and Diarmuid handing the pile to me, like it was a chalice and I, like a mope, thinking it was some kind of an honour to be scraping the mud off them and when they were dry the next day, didn’t I darn the lot of them like an even bigger mope. But this morning, anyway, I hid a couple of the eggs for ourselves and got a big pot of porridge going. T’was when Coughlin made his smart remark that I had to walk over to the fire because I thought I was going to cry and the only thing that cured me, as I was looking down into the bubbling oatmeal, was when I remembered being told how the waiters above in the Savoy Hotel in Cork might spit into the soup of customer if they took a turn against him. And I am still smiling now through my stupid old tears, sitting by the well in the dark, thinking of what I’ve just put between our sheets after my old mope, Diarmuid, gave our bed away to Coughlin for the night.  Diarmuid, of course, insisting, right go wrong, that it was a great honour and that it would make my day.

 

Knock: a common Irish place name - it comes from Cnoc which means mountain

Martina Evans

in collection, Facing the Public ,  Sep 2009,

Anvil Press Poetry, ISBN 978-0-8564641-2-6

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