Eccles Street

Eccles Street

Eccles Street

It was the silver age of the sepia print.
From Eccles Street
the wanderer set out in the heat of June,
to take the epic route,

to make a day of small detours
with cronies in the meeting rooms
and hostelries.
Journey-man. Pilgrim. Tenant
of a creaky house

that after slow decline was gone in time,
I retrace your path
from the precinct of the dispossessed
to the dunes in Sandymount

and the round Martello with its climbing
steps and assonant echoes
that echo still, a hundred years since
Odysseus prowled his Dublin streets
and bawdy-house.