THE TREE THAT WITHERS IN ITS LEAVES
The tree that withers
in its leaves
with no name!
in nets of little
fishes
for a man much legless
in his stumps
with this! the
winnowing of
autumn through her
tears
of terror.
For here is a man fits
inside my shoes,
a man of water with his
mouth
seadeep.
This man
perpendicular to the
journey
between two stars,
a man erect in his
rusty clocks,
in his season full of
faces
they are withering with
the wind.
Another explosion of
feet
of lungs, of light!
Here is a man with his
shadow
wet with sex
in its scalpel sharp
edges,
its ripening in the glands,
its sperm and seed
between the atoms,
behold, a man of birth
among the
multitudes!
This is a song of the
roadside
on a sunday
torn from the calender
so all the leaves
will fall from his
shoulders.
And his feet don't fit
inside
his shoes no more.
Shape him well, sister.
Shape him so his
muscles deliver the
subtraction of lives
left in stone,
shape him in birth and
leavetaking,
in women heavy as
mirrors,
in echoes and arms
who never held him.
Shape him in corners
and angles
and quotations.
How he is coming among
the ants,
insect in his sticks
and footlessness
and coming in the grain
and in his ears the
howling of space
and its half human
shapes
a silence assassinated.
Here is a man dreams
among women,
when the skin is soft
and the walls of the
prison weep
and the words won't fly
no more.
A gentle man with his
pockets convulsing.
And it is autumn again
and the sun
breaks the world into
ice
and a wind whistles
through the ruins
of his ribcage
and the ruins of woods
and debris
and this is a man of
peace!
A man surrounded by
ceasefires.
This man who has no
country now.
Here is a man shedding
in his clothes
and his flesh falls
for all her leaves weep
in their
whispering.
O, he has hoisted the
dead between
the shrapnel of his
shoulders
and the light leaks
from his emptiness
and it is one blow
among the blinding
stars
and it is autumn
and the wind has blown
it all away
for, O, we are all
endless in
our shaping
this dance of the
leaves
among the wars!
Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956.
He survives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, at present.
Recent publications include poems in the Rusty
Nail, The Camel Saloon, Dead Beats, Red River Review, Word Riot, The Junk Lot
Review, Dead Flowers, Pyrokinection, Dead Snakes, Carcinogenic Poetry, Napalm
& Novacain, ditch, Bone Orchard Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review and
Pemmican. Previously his work has been published in Left Curve (No.
13, 14 & 20), Compages, Poetry Ireland Review, the Anthology of
Irish Poetry and the Irish Socialist (newspaper). http://www.seamascarraher.
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