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ALAN WEADICK I've
had poems in Books Ireland, The Burning Bush and others, and most
recently in NthPosition. For several years I helped run a theatre company
in Dublin, where I performed in and directed plays by Yeats, Synge, Beckett,
Mamet and others. My own play Knock-Off was produced in Dublin and Cork
in January 2001. The
North American "accent" or voice in ‘Snowdance’ is meant
to convey a sense of how, growing up in Dublin the 70's and 80's a lot of us
actually believed, or wished, because of the ubiquity of the culture, that
we were American despite the evidence to the contrary.
LEAVES
But I do love other things
besides my broken voice With it’s roar inaudible to all
but myself.
This soft curtain of autumn rain
for instance Dappling the sluggish Liffey
below the balcony
Which is no less murky and
sprouting with the seeds Of legend than it ever was,
wherever it all started.
Probably someplace just shy of
when we were all So dumb that we thought fallen
leaves were a kind
Of next-to- useless present from
the sky. They seemed Made for the palm of your hand,
one meandering
Road map crunched recklessly
against the other Leaving no sting or stain and
requiring no sweat
Or instructions for your
instructors to unravel, grudgingly. You could lie flat between the
huge arms of roots
And have an accomplice build you
a house of them Provided you remained very still
and didn’t giggle
At the unexpected roominess of
the place Even with all it’s doors and
windows shut tight.
That was a bit of all right when
you didn’t have all day To hang around the house moping
and growing
A brain to one side of the
television set. When you were still A bit of a dope but no more of a
dope than you are now
Hanging from random balconies
with all five senses Waiting for a sign that language
hasn’t been dead to
For years, the bill for at least
one experience That hasn’t been paid for in
full, with thanks.
SNOWDANCE
Well it’s kinda like the rain
dances We did in the latter half of the
last
Century-a buncha sweaty kids on
some Suburban backwoodsman’s lawn
Flailing about around the
foot-taller Medicine Boy who, as well as
being
The victim of an early spurt
heavenwards, Was also the one who could give
the most
Accurate rendering of the painted
chants And shuffle –footed boogie of
goggle box
Indians during droughts of
innovative, educational Programming
In those jumpy days there was a
lotta harmonies Mustering in the hidden canyons
and bluffs
Of those parts, a lotta grit and
marrow flying About betwixt all the false
starts and samey weather.
So even in, like, the great heat
of seventy- five You knew that into each life a
little
School must fall and in a burst
of answered prayer You could very well be back to
back
In wet fags, bells and bicycle
sheds. As for snowdancing, well that’s
a whole other
Tin of beans. More of an indoor
thing Where it’s easy to postulate
that blankets
Are for wusses and the thing you
recall as Snow reserved for glorious fools.
Less of a dance
And more of an inner keening for
the near-silence And muted colour of the whole
enterprise; just short
Of freezing the whole frantic
panorama. Yes, thanks. That’s fine. Just for a little
while. Until Spring, anyway.
I reckon we’ll have our
original faces back by then, Ready to make an entrance through
curtains
Of warm water to don our magpie
suits And crow’s-feather
headdresses.
That adult croaking you hear now
will, Almost certainly, fade in it’s
own sweet time.
copyright
©
Alan Weadick |