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15th March, 2024

Friday Poem – ‘B-Aisling’ by Eoghan Walls

Photograph of dense cobwebs

In honour of St Patrick’s Day, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘B-Aisling’ by Eoghan Walls, one of our Irish poets, from his collection Pigeon Songs.

B-Aisling Shrouds of web fall most thickly over St Stephen’s Green. Bare clothing rails creak in doorways all up Grafton Street. Higher up, web-cables howl as a dry wind scours the city. Double-deckers barricade the roads that lead to Trinity. Rust blooms where vehicles were punctured in their sides. Cocooned, the statue of Joyce looks like a funeral bride. Close up, webs are clotted by broadsheets and spent cash. The buildings creak, bracing in the tension before a crash. The sky is reflected bleakly in the city’s black windows. Dusk falls unlit. New filaments scoot out from the GPO. Under bridges, dark limbs clatter the dry bed of the river. I am back, with a crowbar and a shotgun, for my mother. This time, the right door bursts in clouds of light and dust. I cut her fragile bones free from her webbed sarcophagus. Looking up, we shuffle backwards to the getaway car and slalom past abandoned lives on the North Circular. In the mirror, the Hivequeen is tearing up the skyline. My mother shakes the webs off, surprised to be alive. Each time, I see her glow more than she ever really did. Like Jocasta. Celluloid. Butch to my Sundance Kid.

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Related Books

Pigeon Songs

Eoghan Walls

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