Moya Cannon

BRIGHT CITY

I follow the light down the canal path,
across the road and on to the Claddagh.
In a blast of morning light which has turned
canal, river and estuary to mercury,
even the cars on the Long Walk are transfigured.

Five swans beat their way in across the bay,
heavy, sounding their own clarion,
as though carrying the world's beauty
in on their strong white backs this Saturday morning.

John Arden

IRAQ ABOUT TO BE INVADED:
I WAS IN IRELAND, SHE WAS IN NEPAL

I walk upon two feet on Irish ground
Two feet two legs
A stomach and a ribcage and a head
And yet my heart is nowhere to be found.
Not three weeks since, it flew away from me
Beyond the beaches, far beyond the sea,
To find the forest and the mountain sides
Where my beloved walks and talks and rides
So far from here I cannot count each mile:
All I can feel, her heartbeat and her smile.

So strange that this should be the grisly hour
For all the world to rock with rage and shake in gusts of fear,
Talked and walked and steered and engineered
Toward this needless endless greedy truthless war.

And yet, while I am here and I am there
And she is there and she is here,
So close together, and so far apart:
We each take hold of one another’s heart.