Poems by Eamonn Graal

Eamonn was born in Coventry to working class Irish parents. He has lived in Manchester since 1992. Now retired, he spent his professional life teaching and managing in adult and further education, in France, London and Manchester. He describes poetry as, "Always being with me". He thinks that the current obsession with 'identity' is a very dry well and will not serve poetry as a voice for the human song- at once both grounded and numinous, but rarely drawn from the indulgent ego, asserting its exception and 'specialness'. If poetry is not a shared experience at the well the pail will be drawn up empty.

All The Mothers Are Crying Again

All the mothers are crying again
In the rubble of their districts
All the new widows are ancient again
In the unfathomable conflict.

In the ghettos, on the boulevards
The dust of ages settles
And in amongst the aggregate are
The orphans of vendettas.

And all this world’s an inversion
In a contrary of fates:
The rebel’s called a traitor,
By the traitor who shields the State.

The alibi of miles away
Absolves the perfect crime.
The lad who sends the missiles out
Holds distance over shame

And all the mothers are crying again
From the depths of broken hearts
Their keening silenced only when
The awful siren starts.

Days and Roses

So the clocks went forward on Sunday
The Easter I only forgot
The clocks leapt forward on Sunday
But I did not.

I did not go forward on Monday
When your roses went to rot
Though the days will be different and changing
Love might not.

The months are away and between us
Now the quiet is all we have got
You’ll forget the roses you gave me.
But I will not.

Requiem: To My Mother

No need to storm the Pearly Gates
You’re admitted on the gentlest knock
Remind Saint Peter, named of stone
That you were also made of rock.

These words we know are ungenerous
Spare witness, and then too few
But love is as love will be:
Uncounted, murmured softly to you.

What if… Barabbas’ Story

There I was now, a certain rogue
The cubit’s length of any Roman
Or Egyptian’s arm for sure
Would judge my length of form.

It was my men got the Samaritan
On the path you put in fable
For the gullible and the poor
Listen to them now and hear them roar.

Maybe you won’t now, so prissy with god
And I can’t get what’s become of you
From working the crowd at Cana and all;
The same lot screaming for your gore.

And that trick we turned on the hillock
You blessing everyone who’s poor
Me hiding the baskets for their hungry maws
Class act, man, the crowd crying out for more.

And listen, they still can-there’s still time
I’ll tip the nod to Caiphas, he’s the Law.
Jesus, say something for god’s sake
Stop mumbling and staring at the floor.

Pratfalls

We carry on like clowns you know
My darling columbine
You are my lonesome Laurel
And I your Harlequin.

Our Punch and Judy knockabouts,
Our packed up little show
Are seldom less comedic, love,
When, jokes aside, we know

That all the clever pratfalls now
Are mutually contrived
To get us to the same place where
We had long ago arrived.

An Only Place (At the Rochdale Canal, near Todmorden)

On hunkers by the even canal
I can yet see no Duce
In the rock-face over;
Though its jaws and edges jutt-
It’s true-
A modest Rushmore
In a hushed parish
With an unassuming view,
There is no Easter Island here
To wonder or to moot
Its plains discern no plebian
And have required no salute.
This is the un-monument, Comrade
And this the eerie stillness
Un-commanded by the rock-face
And here, the brief continuous moment
Of a small and precedent order
In a huge and only place.

Would You Be Here

Would you be here now,
On this walk
And after the talk-
Be in step with me,
Long-armed,
Ridiculous on the strand

With our here and there
Behind us,
We two headed
Credulous towards the breakers
And, knowing this,
Still be hand in hand?

'Parental Responsibility'

I reached the mail box of your mother’s phone
And left, “I hope you had a lovely time in Blackpool”
One part hopes you couldn’t: to the other hopes you did
Expressed in this meanest ratio, my complicit kid.

I’ve watched your smile grow weaker and falter in the months,
Driven off in the back of the car, your wave fails, then slumps
Your head turns and fixes on to duty in the front
Collusive little agent, enlisted little runt!

You reached the black box of your daddy’s phone
Left, “I’m back from Blackpool. I hope you phone me soon”
I’d come to hers and see you. I’m on my way around
So one part lifts the handset: while the other puts it down.

Manny and Izzy of Ayapa

Manuel Segovia and Isidro Valasquez lived in Ayapa in Tabasco down Mexico way. They always have; the first for seventy five and the other for sixty nine years, of having no money and maybe two teeth between them. It was only these two grebby Stalwarts who spoke Ayapeneco. One thing they agreed on separately is that Ayapenenco is a tag imposed by outsiders on their tongues the true name of their language Is Muumte Ooote: True Voice. Perhaps a ziggurat, like Nimrod’s tower of old was build down the dusty road to Ayapa, because each speaks a different dialect of the so-named True Voice, though separately one would understand the other without much hindrance at all. The American professor who was embalming their tongues in a dictionary reported that the language was so exact that kolo-golo-nay clinches ‘greediness’ in the aural hint and visual nudge of: gobbling like a turkey, and that Manuel used to talk to his brother (sadly ten years gone from Ayapa and the world) in the nailing inflections of Muumte Ooote, or at least (and respectively) in a strain of it. The American professor who is pickling this stuff in a dictionnary of both dialects also reported that Manny and Izzy, “Don’t have a lot in common and won’t talk to each other”