for Sally Murphy

An easy summer pilgrimage

Starting out from Iveagh Gardens behind the Concert Hall

After an hour there on the grass

Walking through St Stephen’s Green

Filled with a thousand colours

Through the white-skinned sprawl on jackets spread

To the gate memorial arch

At the top of Grafton Street

The heat and beat of style drumming here

the flesh of fashion’s walk

the subtle twist of line and slight decline

at Chatham Street and Neary’s lamplights firmly held

the flower stallers sitting in their cardboard gardens

a grey bundle sleeping in the shade

The street’s near perfect form

diminished only by the pulse of the tracksuit vendors

diminished Bewleys still the anchor tenant there

with stained-glass light and its coffee-scented air

Hurry to the corner of Wicklow Street

Where the jeweller’s windows paint a picture of the past

Go into Switzer’s if you need a temporary lift

To be fired with the scent of make-believe just inside the door

Over to the gates of Trinity where Dublin is rooted

Linger by the railings for a friend

One heel suspended

Your time standing still for now

The sun reflected in the sea of white tee shirts

Backpacking into the city’s crevices for the afternoon

Ordinary missions of the heart

little voyages into memory alas forgotten all too soon

Out into the stream once more

around the façade of a parliamentary past

along short high wide Westmoreland Street

to the cool bridge across the indifferent river

up adultery avenue

where mute monuments say

we were the giants of yesterday

Easons a lasting outpost of the written word

the rest of the street thronged with dark nylon

to Parnell’s stylish pose his cut granite plinth

the two overcoats for some reason no one knows

It is after four according to the singing bones

time to rest the heart and read important poems

The Municipal Gallery Revisited

John Synge Yeats and Augusta Gregory waiting for

you as it were

all their images around

No other city stroll could fill the Irish heart like this

weld the senses with such summer bliss

and in your dreams wherever the world wakes you

its memory and painted climax for the wandering soul creates

an inner peace

of the soft air of belonging