looks like

I have lived my life

in the shadow

of this one thing:

ignorance

not ignorance about

the music of von Webern

or ignorance about

how to speak German

or even ignorance about

quantum physics

my ignorance about such things?

it almost goes

without saying

but my ignorance about them

is not complete

or total

I have heard at least twelve notes

of von Webern

which is enough to know

that I do not wish

to hear another twelve notes

of von Webern

I can say

Ich bin eine apfel strudel

whenever the conversation

turns towards

who can speak German?

which admittedly isn’t really

that often

I say it

with more confidence and authority

than I should

I am an apple strudel

ha ha ha

and I even have

two books

about quantum physics
although I did not get past

page 4

on either of them

and the first three pages

made as much sense to me

as Ancient Greek

although I’m not

completely ignorant

about Ancient Greek either

no

I can recite the Ancient Greek alphabet

having studied it as a schoolboy

highly educated

fool

that I am

the ignorance

I allude to

the ignorance

in whose shadow

I have blindly stumbled

ambled shambled

and mumbled

is that overwhelming ignorance

the ignorance

of self

which comes from

                                   not knowing where

you come from

it ambushes your days

your weeks

your months

and your years

when you go to the doctor

and she asks about

your family history

and you explain

that you were

adopted

although you don’t explain

that you are sick

of explaining

that you were adopted

and

by the way

never once did a doctor

ever say

gosh

that must be rather difficult

for you

but
I see

or

okay then

and you wonder what it is

that they see

and what it is

that is okay

when you are in church

and the priest says

we are all god’s adopted children

and your heart beats

like it’s World War III

which is

nuclear

and you think

either I was adopted twice

or this priest

doesn’t know

what he’s talking about

at a family gathering

during their bonding sessions

of

Sally

is turning into

Aunty Mary

Dominic

looks just like

his dad

Rebecca

is as beautiful as

her mother

and Paul has inherited

David’s green fingers

while you sit there

working out

that what this really means

is that

you

alone

are the only person

in the world

that you

are related to

and when my adoptive mother

the aforementioned Sally

came to see

my oldest son Fintan

when he was less than one day old

because with really young babies

you can see who they look like

let

that

one

slowly

sink

in

I was going to end

this little poem

written in the style

of Kirill Medvedev

by saying something along the lines of

if you’re adopted I feel an instant affinity

with you

for you alone share my ignorance

and know what it feels like

everyone else?

you can guess

and then finish on a final flourish

about how adopted people

somehow have to find a way

to own their lack of knowing

while most adoptive parents

won’t even admit

that when it comes to adoption

they are

somewhat astonishingly

completely

bloody-mindedly

ignorant

but nothing lasts forever

including miraculously

my own ignorance

and that is how last weekend happened

when I met my father’s brother Patrick

for the first time

and my cousin Helen

for the first time

and also my cousin Howard

for the first time

who

by the way

looks like Fintan

A. They died.

Give everyone a gun:

Survival of the quickest on the draw.

Give everyone a knife, a hand-grenade,

An arsenal, a bomb.

A Death Star.

You see where this goes wrong?

Give every U.S. child the chance to hide.

Q. You know what happened next? 

While Sitting on the Train

While sitting on the train – I’m ‘practising

my scales’: writing blank verse lines devoid

of Class A Poetry, but shifting though the

creative gears, from neutral to first

(which sometimes yields an idea worth pursuing) –

when my attention is diverted by

a shouting woman getting on the train.

I don’t look up, continuing instead

to write my lines of bouncing, rhythmic patterns.

…I’m simply shifting gears: creak, grind, whirr, shift…

I write. Reading back, I see that I

have written shift and shifting in the same line.

The interruptions of the noisy woman

become too much; I can’t ignore them: she

has moved into the seat opposite me.

....The hypermoaning woman venting spleen…

I write. Her children – ah! her targets – join her.

…and spitting venom at her sons. No wonder…

my observations, written in real-time

…they wind her up, the only way that they…

It’s not exactly poetry, but still.

…could get attention. A sorry state.

And as they join her, there she sits, in huffish

silence, before resuming her tirade.

I’ve barely reached my second gear, but she’s

in fifth, and hurling insults loud and ugly.

From further up the carriage comes a new

distraction: piercing; insistent. I write.

…And now a screaming child. It’s hardly Whitsun

Weddings in here. Humanity, thy name is

tattooed in gothic letters across knuckles.

It’s true: one of the sons has this adornment.

And as I write, she barks a line of blank verse:

…I absolutely dare you, Josh! I dare you!

Young Josh now grasps this opportunity

to wind his mother up some more and jumps

on to the platform where the train has stopped.

He waits too long. The Josh-less train departs.

There’s silence, followed by some whispered words,

and minutes later, five young children and

their reckless mother exit at the next stop.

Poor sods, I think, and get on with my writing.

Twice in One Day

People who don’t read, they miss out

on those small miracles of coincidence

which jolt your consciousness

into emitting a small laugh –

or, in my case a loud, ‘Ha, ha! Now way!’aHa

(every time, I’m quite predictable like that) –

whenever you’ve heard a word for the first time

and later, that same day,

in a novel or a poem,

or a tome about political science

(if that’s the mood you’re in)

you encounter that word,

in print, for the first time.

It’s possible that this might happen

when you’re reading one of my poems,

as I’m occasionally given to the obscure or the sesquipedalian,

although usually I prefer

the language of the demotic.

What’s that? You only heard demotic

for the first time this morning,

yet here it is in print?

You’ve clearly been hanging out

with those plain-speaking poets again,

and then reading one of their poems,

haven’t you?

Displaced

I wonder if you’ve ever had that feeling

where all of life is out of place and things

seem ten times bigger than they really are?

Nothing is real and everything is normal?

My head was empty then and I was just a shell.

splintered

the world is rarely beautiful

we pin it down with metal spikes

and yours go through the fragile floor

Trail

Trail twists round splintered remnants,

each lie bigger than the last.

Magnified by time’s distance,

seen through unfocused lenses.

Warped myths, bent truths, fractured lives;

misplaced, strained, ruptured, shifted.

All dark lines must find an end.

The Words Blink First

You grab some words and fling them at the page.

Unknown. Forgotten. Lost. Concealed. And Father.

You glare at them; they stare at you. You hold

their gaze for one last round of Who Blinks First?

For years they’d played this game and always won.

Unknown would never yield to simple truth.

Forgotten stayed forgotten; held its ground.

Lost and Concealed had formed a grand alliance.

Father was father to them all: concealed,

unknown, and lost to you. Forgotten, like

the waves forget the shore, or rain forgets

the cloud, or tears forget the sound of laughter.

But this time, as you look towards these words,

the truth comes into focus and the words

blink first. They look away, and Father is

no longer just a word, a thought, a dream.

And then it’s waves of laughter: raining tears.