Anam Cara

Purgatorial

Beneath me sleep

splits like pliant silk,

I drop derelict

into a bare dream,

where my language,

dry as paper

is being burned

by a young child

over a black stove.

I cannot see his face,

but feel the fearsome

power of his play.

His uncanny hands

herd every private word

back to its babble shape,

fixes them in lines,

mutters at the order

then, in a swerve

drives them over the edge

into the fire’s mass

of murmuring tongues.

He takes too

my inner antiphon

of wild, wind-christened

placenames:

Caherbeanna,

Creig na Bhfeadóg,

Poll na Gcolm,

Ceann Boirne.

My weak words

crust the pages.

Our shy night-words,

which no other had heard,

he spatters with

yellow laughter;

to crackle like

honey in the flame.

I am glad to see his

fingers grab the sheets,

matted with the cockroach phrases

of other voices that

crawled in to hurt.

He stops

when he sees

the white scroll

and backs off

from its silence.