Hey, there was a good one by Mary O'Malley in the above-mentioned Anthology of Irish Poetry (which I have here to hand, so I don't mind copying it out):
Ceres in Caherlistrane
Somewhere near forty-second street, a girl, copper-haired, sings for a hawk-eyed man. He tastes, in the lark's pillar of sound honey and turf-fires. A tinker's curse rings out:
This is the voice of Ireland, of what we were. He approves. Her hair gleams. There is a vow. Later, she skips into the graffiti-sprayed subway. At the edge of hearing, a laugh, a man's death cry,
a woman's love call are carried out of the tunnel's round mouth caught in the snatch of a tune. She has no idea these underriver walls are shored up with Irish bones, black men's bodies.
She thinks all the buskers in New York are down here tonight like cats. She hears them—a keen, a skein of blues. They speed her passage. She hums, picking up the echoes in her river-run.
In Galway, her stooked hair ripens that Summer. At Hallowe'en there are wineapples. A seed caught in her teeth will keep the cleft between this world and the next open, the all souls' chorus a filter
for certain songs that rise from a cold source. Brandy and honey notes replace spring water— the gift price to sing an octave deeper than sweet, tuned to a buried watercourse.
Her, I'd look for in used book stores. She has a poem that calls back to Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" and to the coffin ships:
down to where the black water is and the little open-mouthed bone-harp sings not of the names for things you cannot say but the long round call of the thing itself.
no subject
Hey, there was a good one by Mary O'Malley in the above-mentioned Anthology of Irish Poetry (which I have here to hand, so I don't mind copying it out):
Ceres in Caherlistrane
Somewhere near forty-second street,
a girl, copper-haired, sings for a hawk-eyed man.
He tastes, in the lark's pillar of sound
honey and turf-fires. A tinker's curse rings out:
This is the voice of Ireland, of what we were.
He approves. Her hair gleams. There is a vow.
Later, she skips into the graffiti-sprayed subway.
At the edge of hearing, a laugh, a man's death cry,
a woman's love call are carried out of the tunnel's
round mouth caught in the snatch of a tune.
She has no idea these underriver walls
are shored up with Irish bones, black men's bodies.
She thinks all the buskers in New York are down
here tonight like cats. She hears them—a keen,
a skein of blues. They speed her passage. She hums,
picking up the echoes in her river-run.
In Galway, her stooked hair ripens that Summer.
At Hallowe'en there are wineapples. A seed caught
in her teeth will keep the cleft between this world
and the next open, the all souls' chorus a filter
for certain songs that rise from a cold source.
Brandy and honey notes replace spring water—
the gift price to sing an octave deeper
than sweet, tuned to a buried watercourse.
Her, I'd look for in used book stores. She has a poem that calls back to Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" and to the coffin ships:
down to where the black water is
and the little open-mouthed bone-harp sings
not of the names for things you cannot say
but the long round call of the thing itself.