ENNIS
BY
Ennis will forever be
enshrined in my mind,
A small mark on the
map from another place and time.
Memories dimmed by
many years as though cut with a knife,
First seventeen years
of love and laughter in my life.
In a town bowed down
by poverty struggling to survive,
Back lanes of
half-door houses waiting someone to arrive.
Narrow winding
streets full of friends and farmers’ horses,
Pompous priests
dressed in black who always walked on water,
And girls in long
green dresses that came down below their knees,
Moving past on
bicycles; boys waiting for a breeze,
And cows moving
slowly herded down towards the water,
Where their blood
will fill the Fergus from the houses of slaughter.
And the Christian
Brothers School where Brother Brien taught,
No such thing as
freedom especially freedom of thought.
We learned everything
in Gaelic in the very ancient script,
Letters from the Book
of Kells or some ancient warrior’s crypt.
Where are the guys I
knew so well; stole by emigration?
Or shied from skirts
that only hurt and joined some congregation.
And now the town is
filled with cars and strangers wall to wall,
A noisy rush of
foreigners in a one-way traffic crawl.
And people don’t have
the time to talk or gossip half the day.
They’re in a hurry,
got to scurry, got to make their pay.
And traffic lights
with tourist types looking out from buses,
This madness of
modern times, I wonder ‘bout the pluses.
OCT 31ST,2012
