{"id":112,"date":"2012-11-05T13:13:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T13:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112"},"modified":"2014-07-02T16:41:28","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T16:41:28","slug":"two-poems-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE FLIGHT<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a good half hour this morning, from five
\ntill the mobile\u2019s ringtone woke me in a sweat,
\nI was young again and Mammy was alive.
\nI was childless, clueless, bookless, setting out
\nalone, circuitously on my way to Shannon
\nwith assignations and delays \u2013 and no passport,
\nI realized. I phoned home frantic with a plan.
\nWould Matty bike it to me at the airport?
\nBut I couldn\u2019t keep our mother on the line.
\nHow come you cannot use a phone! I roared.
\nThen two nieces showed up, grown up, all smiles
\nin a red MG. I\u2019d no notion who they were.
\nYet they took me in. With luck I\u2019d make my flight,
\nif Mammy now would ring me on my mobile.<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/p>\n

THE AGE OF STEAM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last night in the box where you name the person
\nto inform in the event of death I wrote \u2018Mother\u2019 \u2013
\nmy mother who lives on most nights in my dreams
\nwhere I\u2019m young again, alone, home for holidays
\nor about to fly to Canada \u2013 running this time
\nfor the plane (the airport\u2019s in the farm next to ours)
\nwhile carrying a shorn Xmas tree and worried
\nwill I be allowed to board, when I wake\u2026then drift
\nto a house I\u2019ve lived in years it seems, spacious,
\nbut with a leaking roof and timber walls so frail
\nthe rickety bedroom\u2019s on the point of caving in.
\nIt isn\u2019t Surrey Road, and then it is but has
\nan added room, which somehow all that decade
\n\u2013 the children growing up \u2013 I never knew was there,
\nan old-style parlour with sideboard, knick-knacks,
\ngramophone and cuckoo clock, and a Sacred Heart
\noffering its coal of glowing flesh, which coils and swells,
\nyet is solid in the Virgin\u2019s hands, its geometry
\nelusive, or rather as I wake in the full coherence
\nof the dream, at the first thought the image slips
\nbeyond perception \u2013 as once in Victoria Station
\nheading for home, for Lisgoold, and about to find
\nthe train to take me there, I stood in bliss under
\nthe departure boards, the mechanical wooden ones,
\nwhen with the noise of skittles they flipped to Sanskrit.
\nBut now I\u2019m back in Hickey\u2019s passage (the next-door farm)
\nin a damp, strip-lit tunnel from which I climb into
\nthe yard, a stop on the old Cork-to-Youghal line,
\nwhere it\u2019s the Age of Steam with limestone walls,
\nan Avery scales, wrought-iron gates and grilles.
\nThe sky is vast with pinnacled slowly tumbling
\ncloud palaces, marble-white and interspaced by
\nlapis blue \u2013 an active spring day of wind with the view
\nacross the Weald, the orchards dense with butterflies,
\nfinches, cuckoos \u2013 and I am loath to turn for home,
\nour dark boreen, the leafless privet, vacant dwelling,
\nwhen I see it\u2019s light outside the curtain, a dawn
\nof dampened sun, pigeons, trucks on Linden Grove,
\nthe trickle of the water feature, and in my chest
\nthe hissing thumping piston \u2013 14 years on \u2013 of grief.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a good half hour this morning, from five
\ntill the mobile\u2019s ringtone woke me in a sweat,
\nI was young again and Mammy was alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nTwo Poems - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112&page=2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Poems - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For a good half hour this morning, from five till the mobile\u2019s ringtone woke me in a sweat, I was young again and Mammy was alive.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-11-05T13:13:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-07-02T16:41:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/JKimforMauriceRiordan.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"3008\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Maurice Riordan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Maurice Riordan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112\",\"name\":\"Two Poems - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-11-05T13:13:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-07-02T16:41:28+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/6f8db7d6cbfea180538790417750e8df\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/6f8db7d6cbfea180538790417750e8df\",\"name\":\"Maurice Riordan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Maurice Riordan\"},\"description\":\"Maurice Riordan most recent collection, The Holy Land (Faber, 2007) received the Michael Hartnett Award. Previous collections, A Word from the Loki and Floods, were nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Award. Other books include A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems About Science and Hart Crane, which appeared in Faber\u2019s Poet to Poet series. Born in Lisgoold, Co Cork, he lives in London and teaches at Sheffield Hallam University.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=9\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Two Poems - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112","next":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112&page=2","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Two Poems - The Manchester Review","og_description":"For a good half hour this morning, from five till the mobile\u2019s ringtone woke me in a sweat, I was young again and Mammy was alive.","og_url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112","og_site_name":"The Manchester Review","article_published_time":"2012-11-05T13:13:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-07-02T16:41:28+00:00","og_image":[{"width":"3008","height":"2000","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/JKimforMauriceRiordan.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Maurice Riordan","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Maurice Riordan","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112","name":"Two Poems - The Manchester Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-11-05T13:13:00+00:00","dateModified":"2014-07-02T16:41:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/6f8db7d6cbfea180538790417750e8df"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=112"]}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/","name":"The Manchester Review","description":"The Manchester Review","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/6f8db7d6cbfea180538790417750e8df","name":"Maurice Riordan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","caption":"Maurice Riordan"},"description":"Maurice Riordan most recent collection, The Holy Land (Faber, 2007) received the Michael Hartnett Award. Previous collections, A Word from the Loki and Floods, were nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Award. Other books include A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems About Science and Hart Crane, which appeared in Faber\u2019s Poet to Poet series. Born in Lisgoold, Co Cork, he lives in London and teaches at Sheffield Hallam University.","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=9"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/JKimforMauriceRiordan.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PuXo-1O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4064,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/4064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}