talk about Knocknagree

in Knocknagree the grocer’s son
asks if I’m spoken for

and at Mass the Priest
orders my aunt to stop speaking

the other half of my family
keep their silence in the churchyard

with men who never
tied their own shoe-laces

or lifted kettles off hobs
quiet men who knew my father

and hid him south of the mountain
like my uncle

men all mahogany
and Waterford glass

men who blessed themselves
with driving gloves

when they passed men
who lived in houses

with curtains as thin as wrists

page 239

peace be to shallow graves

peace be to shallow graves
where grass parts the country
like hair and to Jean McConville

and all Belfast widows
and children and their stone farms
where the hidden are hunted

every day in Ireland
to the elbow to elbow
houses and their horses

to the way they stand
in the history and headlights
of rain and hear the bullets

and walk over bridges and codes
and plans and threats and guns
that speak and bombs that wear masks

and dance with the barber
may they do so in peace

page 240

aye ready ready

inside the diorama
Scott exchanges the din
of the world for man-hauling

though his plaster-of-Paris
voluntary muscles
are uncooperative

though his tiny plasticine boots
sleep in thick white paint
and his mind is tethered

to pipe-cleaners he seems
to go forward on feet
that never yield

not even when his ponies
perish and his dogs
disappear like tricks

not even when his sledge
as heavy as ever
decides to stand very still