Forgetting the Registers
That early summer’s day: it must have been early, that day,
Because cut flowers were still falling from their wicker-work
Around a picture of the Sacred Heart, that day you spoke
So abruptly to yourself; then turned, telling me to stay
Here by the cross-roads between two Electoral Areas.
You had gotten two draft registers confused. The names
We carried in the back seat, thumbed and stained,
Were Jackie Fahey’s. Anyway, they were not ours.
You needed your own voters’ names that carried weight
In a district where power was already parched dry
With bad news from elsewhere. I got out, without asking why,
And stood waiting for names that might deliver, yet,
The last seats in a tight election: so much depended upon us.
Swallows flitted in and out like personation officers
Grown bored, a distant pheasant grew scandalous
With comment, pink earth was indelible with burning furze.
But while I waited for you to come back in your old Merc
I was interviewed and spilled the beans. It was pheasant
And swallow made me recite all the names: their distant
And sacred purpose came for me, leaving others in the dark.