Vona Groarke

Side by side

The Slaughterhouse

Some gap in the sidings, a man too few 
at the turn into the pens, and they were out, 
scattering like buckshot through the cars. 
Until a clutch of lads in bloodied aprons 
bore down on them with shouts and whirring arms. 
Within minutes, they were gathered, 
it was done. The lads strayed back to work, 
the steel doors closed on the skirl and din, 
the driver tidied his gates, and pulled away. 
 
It was chill to the bone. I had been called to come. 
I was late, though I didn’t know then, not on the journey, 
with the plain-chant of the train seeing me home 
through towns that came too slowly, 
like final words, like beads in her hands; 
not when I passed within miles of the house; 
not at the station; not as I watched 
the flurry of pigs; not when they were bested; 
not while they were killed; not when I was driven away.

Vona Groarke

(Ireland, 1964)

Vona Groarke was born in 1964 in Edgeworthstown in the Irish Midlands, a town already associated with the 19th-century novelist Maria Edgeworth and the 18th-century poet Oliver Goldsmith: typically Groarke has addressed both writers in her work. In fact, since her first collection, Shale, Groarke has written a poetry whose subjects defy pigeonholing, and whose formal elegance is as evident in i...

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Poems of Vona Groarke

The Slaughterhouse

Some gap in the sidings, a man too few 
at the turn into the pens, and they were out, 
scattering like buckshot through the cars. 
Until a clutch of lads in bloodied aprons 
bore down on them with shouts and whirring arms. 
Within minutes, they were gathered, 
it was done. The lads strayed back to work, 
the steel doors closed on the skirl and din, 
the driver tidied his gates, and pulled away. 
 
It was chill to the bone. I had been called to come. 
I was late, though I didn’t know then, not on the journey, 
with the plain-chant of the train seeing me home 
through towns that came too slowly, 
like final words, like beads in her hands; 
not when I passed within miles of the house; 
not at the station; not as I watched 
the flurry of pigs; not when they were bested; 
not while they were killed; not when I was driven away.