Quincy Lehr

A Letter Home

The sound comes in a burble from the street,
Strained, like the words you mumble through a pillow.
Cast against the headlights, clots of cloud
Hang low and grey — inert — until they billow
To fill the black of sky. And lurching feet
Plod up the stairs, intermittent, loud.

An old and musty building with a view
Of an unknown steeple set in solemn lines —
This is where I live. The music’s off,
And there’s no soundtrack to the chokes and whines
Of traffic trundling in a rumbling queue,
Except, perhaps, my ragged smoker’s cough.

“Georgian Dublin” rots in constant damp,
The way it always has, I guess — although
Only weeks have passed since I moved in,
And I’m in no position yet to know
The letter from the flashy postage stamp:
Which decay comes from without — which from within.

A sense of some exquisite isolation
Permeates this hour. The neighbourhood,
With “Joycean” connotations, does not know
That I’m right here, and even if it could
Direct its gaze at me — my transplantation
To these shores — would it merely show

That I’m another graft, like Polish signs
In windows — or reality TV
On screens in pubs? Or the taco shells I bought?
Or that whole tourist crap facsimile
Of the “Auld Sod” in D2 shops where lines
Of visitors throw down the cash they brought

To pay the piper on Grafton Street? I’ll stop
Complaining, since the rain remains outside,
Falling, as it does most every day,
To form a slick of moisture as I hide
Behind my window, staring at each drop
Just outside, yet a continent away.

[ First published in the book Across the Grid of Streets , Seven Towers, Dublin, 2008. ]