DUTY CALL

Someone has to do it:
convince her of her charm
when she doubts it,
walk with her through gardens
under a wide arbour
that seems to have no end
and down an avenue of dark figs,
help her to find a pink flower
in an ambush of ferns,
share lunch in the generous
embrace of an oak

and make sure she remembers
a road that winds to a tavern,
with the smudged scores
of last night’s darts on the wall,
and where from a back room
the strains of The Lass of Aughrim
are joined by a lilt of pure laughter.


Winner of Friendly Street’s Satura Prize 1999., and described by Ray Liversidge as: ‘one long elegant and lyrical sentence describing an unconditional reconciliatory gesture’.

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