Poems for the Lockdown - Recession once again?

Poet Kevin Higgins provides a Galway related poem to chime with these strange times

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.

 

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