On Lansdowne Road

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Under the asbestos shadow of the capital of sheepskin smug

Up a night-lane in the light-rain

On the banks of an erratic river

Where sometimes the ducks are marooned on its gravel mounds and where

Years ago two hysterical women stood on a kitchen table

Screaming as it burst its banks and their ornaments floated away.

On the deserted railway platform rising out of the level crossing

The fat cashier stood bravely to repel with honesty

A frenzied assault which had not yet come to mortal blows.

 

 

The untouchable was in full flight

Doing everything to terrorise the resolute victim twice his size;

The air was filled with the electricity of a stabbing.

But even a coward it seems can change the subject.

Where are you from? I asked them each in turn

What part of Dublin?

The night before the English rugby match at Croke Park

Silent Oh Moyle be the roar of thy daughters

 

   

Phibsborough, answered the beleaguered one.

I know it well I said

St Peter’s Church and school, Dalymount Park, The Mater

And Mountjoy Jail.

The frenzied one smiled at its mention.

His Alma Mater no doubt.

I’m not from Dublin, he said in conversation

Climbing down from the hysteria of his unprovoked attack;

Bray.

Bray; I know it well I said.

James Joyce lived in Bray

And the dodgems.

It’s not Dublin, he said twice or three times

No, I know that, it’s Wicklow, and he said Bray three more times

So I could her in his pronounced accent the warbling of its mountainy men

Sheepshearers.

 

 

I asked the official now safe behind the bullet-proof glass if he was all right.

Never better it seemed and the next train is in six minutes, he said.

Shaking hands with the untouchable the fourteenth time,

The thought occurred that I might survive this night.

Your train is in four minutes, the safe one said; then two.

I thanked him for nothing; timing the advance to the opposite platform,

Leaving it to the last minute before entering the underground tunnel,

Giving my new friend something else to look forward to.

 

 

The electric arms of the level crossing were squeaking and bleeping

Above the orange street lamps threw down a sad short cone of light

Hardly penetrating the wet cold night,

As the train rattled to a halt along the oily track.

Timing is everything if you don’t believe in God.

The hydraulic doors hissed to a close and stranded us like the ducks.

He stabbed his fingers into the rubber fenders of the jam

No! he cried no! no! no! no!

And either the driver opened them again

Or the sweet Magdelene inside the train with her hair in a soft bee-hive

Trying with all her pretty power to prise them apart;

But they opened and we entered into a white theatre

Shocked by the ebullient entrance of the two gallants.

 

 

I have never met any one like you he said in my whole life

I never thought I would meet any one like you, he said.

That’s a German name I said and he seemed a bit surprised

Surprised to think he had a past beyond his short grey memory.

My father died when I was nine and he grinned at the floor,

Telling me he was thrown out of school at thirteen.

He was twenty seven now and full of troubled time.

 

 

If he asked me once he asked me twenty times, my name.

Every time I told him

He repeated that he never thought he would meet someone like me.

Someone, I gathered, who had been to school with a tuxedo and  superior attitude to match.

Taking the precaution to give a forwarding address care of a neighbouring town,

He swung around and around again and again on the silver maypole

Apparently happy.