Ordnance Survey

Have a truthful eye about you
like the Ordnance Survey people
who are so filled with love
they map the everyday bits too:

the road to a church in Longford,
a junction near Charlestown,
a hillock off the N7 in Tipperary South,
a stream widening in Corofin.

I ask the same of your hands and eyes,
don't skip the poorly-rounded shoulder,
deep-set eye, inelegant calf;
be thorough in your daily working of me.

"Plane split up in sky before crash"

It broke into four pieces before plunging
mile after mile to the sea, the choppy water
hitting it like merciless amalgam. Mr Chang
the investigator said the pilot didn't even have time
to make a mayday call before seats, lifejackets,
teddies, airline blankets, passengers fell out,
hurled with brutal speed into the extreme
cold purity of the stratosphere. Nietszche once
longed for that fountain, the rare place where
Zarathustra could advise his dust-caked acolytes
and cleanse their faltering minds. But he too fell
for Lou Salomé who tied him to a dog-cart;
the earth keeps pulling, I say it's so, I whose
heart had to break before I could lose you.

^

Biography

Susan Lanigan has been published in Hermathena (1994) where she translated an ode of Horace. She won a place on three writers' workshops (Peter Fallon, Thomas Kilroy and Deirdre Madden) while pursuing her BA in Trinity College. Formerly a programmer and technical support analyst, she is on a career break while completing an MA in Writing in NUI Galway.