Irish Ulysses

(A response to "Ulysses" by James Joyce)

Woolgathering on city streets
thoughts are not a conscious stream
more a river, running swift and deep
beautiful as the Liffey.

All life crammed into a single day.
Odours of body-sweat and fish
the smell of cabbage and a taste of bile
jostle with noises on the quay;
cart-wheels, whistles, hooters, cranes
while the sea cradles the isle of Eire.

Beneath the pub’s unholy lights
as guilt and sorrow drown in beer
the talk’s of poetry, birth and death
the men they knew or never saw.
Humour, prejudice, certainty and doubt
meld with the lilt of fantasy and youth
as voices of the sirens swell
to fiddles, pipes and solitude.

The myth and more, the flowers that bloom.

© Paula McKay