Poem

Eugene O\'Connell

Side by side

Mirror, Mirror

Which of us, hand on heart, can swear
He passed a mirror without looking
At his own reflection, not realising that
Others see a dunce’s cap on the head
That’s fussed over as if it was Cleopatra’s.
A head he’d swear on the holy book is
Wiser more debonair, as fit to hold office
As any high court Judge or Taoiseach.
Besotted with himself this dunce forgets
The story of Narcissus the boy who fell
In love with his own reflection in a well.
The gold washed out of his hair when
He was found, the colours of the Adonis
As withered as a handful of old grass.

Taoiseach: Irish for Prime Minister The epigraph is an adaptation by the poet of quotes from Sebastian Brant\'s Narrenschiff.

$Eugene O\'Connell$

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...