Poem 404

The Mount Street Catholic cemetery at Victoria University … I don’t eat lunch there any more but I’ve looked at it every day of the last twenty years from my office window …

Desecration

I had thought the comfortable family
was in this tomb I eat
my lunch on
                          father mother
the child that died
wrapped like yachts against the winter
stacked in a grey stone garage
                                                               their long
sailing season the century
that curled into this
                                        but
today I climbed down the bank
and saw between the bushes
the empty door frame
                                            inside
shattered crypts
broken glass
and human shit