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CanaanAuthor(s): Gary AllenSource: Irish Pages, Vol. 2, No. 2, The Earth Issue (Autumn/Winter, 2004), pp. 94-95Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30022023 .
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FOUR POEMS
Gary Allen
CANAAN
I have found my name cut into the threshing-floor
cold slabs indented by the flail till wrists, arms, shoulders were numb with repercussion
the thud, thud, thud, steady and surreal down through the years
and the fine dust, the grain separated from husks and straw, in which a child saw the God his fathers feared.
The high windows of barns and spireless churches,
dry as a father's love, tell a child that nothing good is obtainable
obedience the only truth.
It matters not how blood is spilt or what it's given for - see how your ploughshares
have been turned back into swords:
this bridge choked with tractor, slurry-spreader, harvester - I have carried a knife in my lunch-box,
ready to kill.
94
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IRISH PAGES
Hazlett reached this age pulled from his hiding-place among the dank pools of flax
spreadeagled on the threshing floor,
fifty lashes tore the skin from his back.
Oh father, what is it that sets us free if not the same mistakes that bind us:
farm machinery pushed aside down the slopes to a dried-up riverbed,
and a baker's honed knife
flung to the long grass.
THE REVIVAL
All these girls clothed in white without a word, blow down the street to meet their brothers.
The clouds are high in the sky -
it is summer.
The trains from Belfast stand at the station
carriage doors flung open.
This way -
my great-grandmother's hand in mine
though I am forty years older -
come down to the river's edge
95
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