Poem

Eugene O\'Connell

Side by side

Seeing the Light

After she draws the pension on Friday
I drive my mother to the graveyard,
She walks among the dead and prays
While I read the newspaper in the car.
I envy how near she is to them, how
Soon she will join the dear departed.
I was in love like that once, consumed
By the idea of ‘love’ until I realised that
It’s not all that people make it out to be.
I envy your faith Mama, your prayer book
Bulging with photographs of the missing,
Your trust in that ghostly other-world
More real to you than the one
You see every day with your eyes.

$Eugene O\'Connell$

Eugene O\'Connell

(Ireland, 1951)

Eugene O’Connell was born near Kiskeam in northwest Cork in 1951. He has published a number of chapbooks, one full collection of poems, One Clear Call (Bradshaw Books, 2003), and one book of translations, Flying Blind (Southword Editions), which was volume 12 of the Cork European City of Culture Translation Series. Diviner, a new collection of his poems, was published by Three Spires Press in 2...