Louis le Brocquy’s ‘Fantail Pigeons’

Louis le Brocquy’s ‘Fantail Pigeons’

Louis le Brocquy’s ‘Fantail Pigeons’

The first pigeons I remember rustled
inside baskets at a seaside station
where someone told us the way-out
scenario of their release and homing.

Before I learned the ring-, the turtle-dove
are pigeons, I guessed by the bill,
the high eye in the mild skull,
the Holy Ghost was an albino pigeon.

Years on, as freak April snow
curled into another station,
a porter filled me in on pigeons:
when they circle above the east platform

a widow will board the next train;
if over the northside shed,
misery will alight from the dawn express;
so on – but only when the snow has fallen.

                               * 

It all came back as I focused on the spray
of thrashing feathers, colour-flutters,
the rush of tumbling heads in ‘Fantail Pigeons’.

Where only one foot emerges (sfumato)
and the shapings of one whole torso – a dash
of dark and carmine at its breast.

And the heads – there are two or three, five:
a pigeon lit upon hanging on thermals,
or lofting, or wheeling; its radiance held.