THIS POEM was written over the June Bank Holiday weekend in 2008 and featured in my third poetry collection, Frightening New Furniture, which was published by Salmon in 2010.
During the Celtic Tiger years, myself and my friend Gary King used to have a long running joke that when the boom ended everything shabby and terrible about 1980s Ireland would be reinstated. The week I wrote this poem it was declared, by whoever declares such things, that the Irish economy was officially in recession for the first time since 1982.
'Ourselves Again'
In the park our ice lollies
fall victim to the June bank holiday heat,
while in glass rooms numbers moving
through dark computers
declare the future
finished.
Tomorrow, we’ll have our double glazing
taken out; the crack put back
in the ceiling and a draught
installed under every door.
I’ll attach a For Sale sign
to the seat of my pants.
Gangs of the angry unemployed
will bear down on the G Hotel
chanting “Down with Daiquiris
and Slippery Nipples! Give us back
our glasses of Harp!”
In pubs nationwide, the carpets of yesteryear
will be reinstated, and there’ll be meetings
of Sinn Fein The Workers Party
going on permanently upstairs.
On our knees, we’ll ask
for the unforgiveness of sins
and life not lasting.
We’ll be ourselves again
and then some.
