Anne Mullins
About the Author
Anne is a teacher-writer-mother-wife-woman who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She likes to travel in the summer for inspiration. She hopes to be a poet one day.
Man Dies, Sheep Bleat, Dog Dances
O’Malley died some twenty years ago
but when you ask about him in the pub
everybody knows you mean old Michael Joe
as if he’d just now finished reciting Yeats
over a pint of Guinness.
Michael Joe could not be buried upright,
like he wanted,
though they walked him up the stony hill
and pick-axed at the ground
for hours, the men at last gave up,
laid him down, and the sod,
and went back down for a draught
of poitin in his name.
Sheep of meek intelligence
sheer the grass about his grave
and bleat like mourners
whether it rains or whether it stops
as it sometimes does.
I saw you bow your head there,
wipe your eyes beneath the oilskin brim.
Pongo the Third, who never knew him,
danced as only sheep dogs can
a merry ring around the cairn.
No headstone, no inscription,
you could only guess he rested here
at the top of the hill, a low pile of rocks
grown mossy.
To Go from Lvov to Djemaa el Fna
There was always too much of Lvov, no one could
comprehend its boroughs, hear
the murmur of each stone scorched
by the sun
~Adam Zagajewski
too much of Lvov
so you return to Marrakech
the square at noon a vacant mile
of dust as packed as pavement
too hot to cross
to the crisscross lathe
where the market starts
and the jelaba'd men
maroon and fez'd
stand or slump
by wares not hardly hopeful
hanging yarns
and mounded spices
suntoasted sunsnuggled
tendrils pierce the nose and
crumble the walls
to lay down a memory
labyrinth of stink
and acrid heat
you wander till shadows
overtake the gate
and spill into the chaos
of a place transformed
like dragon's teeth when sown
to sprout an army
sunheat pierces the trodden earth
and planted beams emerge as freaks
and acrobats in white on ebony
pearls in the dark
the nasal horn to dance the snake
the drum to flip the African boys
the thump the shout the sizzle
of fires that echo the sun
the trance
enchants you alive
in this Square
of the Dead
Note: Poitin is Irish moonshine, pronounced something like "potcheen".
