Poem

Eugene O\'Connell

Side by side

Pieta

The best day of the year was when
Tim Carroll came to kill the pig,
His pockets bulging with sticky
Sweet bulls eyes, a treat
For us children while he talked
To the grown ups and drank Stout.

We didn’t care about the pig, grown
Huge and reeking in her chamber,
Or close our ears to her screams on
The way to the table, so long as she
Didn’t bite or kick us with the leg
We were given to hold.

Lucky it was Teresa’s job to hold
The pan for the blood under the throat,
Or we’d have missed seeing the insides.
The heart that was like our own,
The bladder that was blown into
A football for us to kick like

We were Pelé in the World Cup or
John Joe shooting from the forty.
Heroes in our own minds until night
Fell, and the ghosts beginning to gather
Around the body on the table,
Made us run in out of the moonlit yard.

$Eugene O\'Connell$

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...