Celts Once Worshipped the Sun

Photo by Ann Curran. © 2014

Photo by Ann Curran
© 2014

On the sixth sunny day in Dublin,
half-naked women rush down Grafton
unveiling the planet’s palest skin.
Some angle baby-loaded buggies
through dense crowds like New York at Christmas.
Double-decker buses whirl around
the tightest corners. Music makers

lean on Molly Malone’s brass bottom,
add to the ceaseless clatter, chatter.
Some of the million-plus residents
escape behind thick walls of shrubs, trees,
bushes abloom in St. Stephen’s Green.
They gaze at James Joyce’s sparkling lake,
busy swans look for lunch from children.

Men tear off shirts, lie down on the grass.
A dad shows his baby son cygnets.
At dark quiet edges of the park
a man, a woman sit on benches.
All the peace of the city hides here.
Joyce, the bust, stares at stuff he still can’t see
but loves as much as he adores Nora.


 

back to issue

Ann Curran is author of the recently released Me First (Lummox Press) and Placement Test (Main Street Rag). Her poetry has appeared in Rosebud Magazine, U.S. 1 Worksheets, The Main Street Rag, Off the Coast, Blueline, Third Wednesday, Notre Dame Magazine, Ireland of the Welcomes, Commonweal Magazine, and others, as well as a number of anthologies. She was a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Catholic, and a longtime editor of Carnegie Mellon Magazine. She is a member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop in her hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.