Dublin

Baggot Road and Beggar’s Bush Chancery Place, Fitzwilliam’s Lane Meath Street, Cork Street, Misery Hill Gig wheels spin in spits of rain Stoneybatter Road, the Spire Folk from Wexford, and County Clare Bride Road, Cuffe Street, Bachelor’s Walk Buckos from Sligo and Rosslare Abbey Street, Croke Park, and Cahir Waterford and the Liffey’s banks Here the world’s accents clash! Boston bleats out Howdee! Thanks! Shannon, Limerick, Liverpool, Norway, Rajasthan, Killarney Here to sample the Irish wit Taste the Guinness and hear the blarney Harmony Row, St Stephen’s Green Fishamble Street, lush Phoenix Park The restless ghost of Oscar Wilde Strange assignations after dark Platefuls of prawns from Dublin Bay Artists, poets, drunks and dreamers Cruises, buses, cobbles, crowds Foodies, fashionistas, schemers Here’s tattooists! Dolphins! Snugs! Cow’s Lane. The bones of Strongbow, too Malahide Castle. Mussels, Punks Bretzel bagels and Irish stew. The Jeanie Johnstone famine ship Shamrocks. A leprechaun’s green hat Pigs’ trotters, bog bodies, cold surf The Book of Kells. A mummified cat The words of Behan, Beckett, Yeats Heaney and Wilde, Bram Stoker, Joyce Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw Such craic as theirs made the world rejoice Mulligan’s Kehoe’s and McDaid’s All teem with diners, boozers, chancers Poets in search of Kavanagh Stand at the bar with toffs and dancers Gulliver’s Travels do not rate Nor Ulysses with his wanderings When Joy takes up its flute and pipes On Parnell Square, and your feet grow wings There’s Rock and Garage, Classics, Pop The Haepenny Bridge has heard them all The Duke of Wellington passed near here Where Mol Malone put on her shawl Theatres and cupcakes, Garda, hurling An Angel, bullet-hole in chest High on O’Connell Street she stands Her badge of honour upon her breast Wrens of the Curragh, long forgot Wraiths, slink in shame from their turf dens The lepers of St Stephen’s Green Vanished, like mists from Gaelic Glens Prick with a stick, Joyce statue, sees A wheelchair user, bald and bleary A girl in a leopard-skin print bra A red-nosed dosser, pissed and leery Hags with the bags, life sized in bronze Immortalizing women’s need To gossip, and set the world to rights The crowds in passing, pay scant heed. Gum-chewing pony-tailed young man Bare ankles and his shirt well worn Strolls past ‘The Chariot of Life’ (Or Mad Milkman as the statue’s known) In dyed pink hair, black at the roots In thong-toed sandals, toe-nails, gold And purple shorts (her bum cheeks hang Like melons, waiting to be sold) A tourist steps, with heavy pack To catch a show or ceilidh act A tourist guide, her golden hair As fair as crinkle-cut French fries Smiles to her queue of skinny jeans With resignation in her eyes While labourers, bellies over belts Dig drains where Trinity’s on view As round the bollards and the fence Mohawk-haired scholars push on through Here dove-grey Garda watch the horde Go by, their phones clamped to their ears Like limpets, while two lovers kiss An old drunk trips, tanked up with beers Here Brendan, Aengus, Ciaran, Eamon Jostle to find a nice coleen Cathleen or Caitlin, Nora, Orla Who’ll cook a stew or a nice drisheen Rucksacks festooned with foreign flags Are used as seats by owners’ asses A tomboy motorcyclist vrooms In bleached blond quiff, and huge black glasses Full-bearded Moslem, acne-faced Leads forth his offspring like Van Trapp Sprinters and strollers, joggers, priests Shoppers and stragglers, baseball-capped All vie for right to hog the path Where do they go, this congregation? Flanagan’s pub? To work? Or home, Hoping no queues wait at the station? Jewish Museum, jails, the Famine History seeps from the walls around Viking longships, Easter Monday Treasures above and underground Georgian Mansion, & Bloomsday travels Beat of bodhran in the Temple Bar Darkey Kelly’s, the Hairy Lemon Dublin’s the place for a wandering star!