The Comforter

I made the one I know cry,
For thinking that my love was unsure.
I lay beside her, and comforted
Her head, turned sideways, to the pillow,

And set a light upon the scene,
To better inspect my handiwork.
I suspect a thing gone out in life,
To have caused such disorder, to have made

A noise issue from the single thing mattering
In my system, other than my self.
I am inexcusable. And fearful that behind
My caresses lies a fastidious corridor,

Leading nowhere
Save to endless motives, coloured tresses.
Forgive my odd touch,
Prepare to lie in emptinesses.

Sara Swift

Last days involve us,
What you most resemble is
Time: its strong line, humour
And never stopping, how gentle
At once but more complicated than
That too. We first danced to become
Closer, and then again you removed fur
Coats and assumed the position of top dog.
Between the shivers of laughter, long flowers,
Drama sense and such tense beauty - so closely
Guarded and yet often released, as offset sunlight
In autumn seems poised to give, in restraint, much.
Best love, smarter, smarting, you take us past accident,
Airports and oceans, above the clouds, arguing certainty.

Normandy Lodge

1.
The Curragh Camp's not precisely here, anymore,
instead, the basic immediate green undulates bare,
except for pools of slow water, and indelible crows,
and the idea of a nation, and another one, prepared
for what unfolds like a map in a field tent, after war;
the horses ran their bold, powerful signatures across
this December-smeared emerald openness, British,
but trained locally, and all the faster for the weather.
My people transplanted themselves here, via India,
distinguished for bravery in a battle, given property,
a home. Indeed, their name was Home, later Dickson-
Hume, then Hume when a son left his father, to be
a stable boy in obscure Canada at the turn of century.

2.
One wonders who fathered what to create such escape,
and such loss: were horse whips used, or love in hay
the answer, to why a Colonel's family should explore
implosion at this cold crater not so far from Dublin?
One day they owned a Big House, the oldest trees
for miles, and many acres, on which many families
worked, who were obliged to pay taxes, or suffer
the penalties, which were legion, according to documents
now in my mother's inquisitive Quebec possession.
Her researches have led me back here to stop and ask
at the Post Office, closed until two in the afternoon,
what ever happened to Normandy Lodge, with its dozen
or more chimneys, long windows, stone fish ponds.

3.
The fire hisses, the rest of the room, with its counter
marked off by a high grate through which one's mouth
is guarded as if by a visor, is dead cold. The man on his side
affirms a memory: it was sold, then ruined without care,
then brought down in 1951 or 1952. Now the gate house
and collapsed stone stables are all. My fiancée, Sara,
is parked by the military gate, outside. With a map
drawn on an envelope, we drive to the close remnants
of my family estate, at Ballysax. On the way I read her
an email version of my grand-father's letter, dated Ormand
Quay, The Plaza Hotel, 1937. In 1936, the family solicitors,
Mercready & Son, 91 Merrion Square, oversaw the auction
of all lands: after the death of the last living son in Ireland.
The law'd required this transfer, as an earlier one had ceded
the same lands to James Henry Dickson, b. Sultanpore, 1814.

4.
The gate house is deserted, and ugly, a Jordan's sign says: SOLD.
We rattle up three lanes, arriving at rotting bales, barbed wire
twisted among rusted lorries, and a pocked dog afraid of cars,
and stones that never seem to have been made to keep good horses
in their places, nor could have caused any man to blush with pride;
but once they must have. Further on, we scan for those old trees
of my grand-father's letter (written when he was twenty-one
and angry with his father who had brought him on this mission
to see what could be recovered from the wreck), the windows
with glass "all of one piece" and the several chimneys of the Manor.
Even in 1937, what was inside were books for "wealthy people"
and yellow documents tiling the floors with boot scuff and manure.
In 2002, the place simply does not exist. Housing developments
instead. And other farms. Land reshaped by deed and trust
and what wars approve. Stopping at a Manor House that lasted,
we are greeted at the door by a Guinness heir, friend to a Magyar
Baron who fled to the region after the collapse in 1918 of that
empire, who now lets out her rooms to guests. One of them
is Honourable, her father in the House of Lords, once. Another
rebuilds these houses for Americans, on onion paper traces for me
the Survey Map of 1927, when Normandy Lodge had a discernible
shape, a location, was not only what can be represented with ink.

Newbridge

^

Biography

Todd Swift is a London-based writer. He is the author or editor of six books of poetry, including Cafe Alibi (DC, 2002), and poetry editor of www.nthposition.com, which this year won the UTNE reader's poll for best online coverage. His reviews, poems and articles have recently appeared, or are forthcoming in, The Dubliner, Books In Canada, Poetry London, New American Writing, and The Drunken Boat. In 2003 he was editorial coordinator for the global Poets Against The War movement. His site is www.toddswift.com