Pat Boran

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The Prayer-Jar

At the bottom of the prayer-jar
was a layer of quiet
so thin it could be missed,
so quiet it might be worn to church.

At the back of the church
you could take, unseen,
the prayer-jar from your pocket,
to collect the sound of people shuffling,

and then go shuffling off back home
through the market visited earlier on,
the clucking of vendors and birds on perches
already somewhere in the belly of the prayer-jar.

Pat Boran

(Ireland, 1963)

Pat Boran was born in Portlaoise, Ireland, in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin. Prior to taking over the running of the press in 2005, he had published four collections of poetry with Dedalus: The Unwound Clock (1990), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996) and As the Hand, the Glove (2001). His New and Selected Poems (first published by Salt P...