Rakestreet

Would you believe it, I got lost again   

And all roads led to Rakestreet. Which was which,   

The short road or the long? A girl of ten   

Behind her counter, drew me a thumbnail sketch   

Of space in time. The Big House was, she said,   

Five minutes away, or seven hundred years.   

Nephin, nebulous in its hat of cloud,   

A reference point. I would never get out of here   

Unless I fell in love with my condition—   

Rakestreet, with its boy behind the bar,   

Its sweatshop, and its permanent television   

In the background, rumbling from afar   

Of war and worldly sex, greed and ambition,   

While the dead slept under lichened stone   

Behind Kilmurry chapel. Older than religion,   

Older than history, this quiet need to atone   

By staying local, once at the very least,   

For an hour, a day, a lifetime. Marry the girl,   

Buy up the stock, become one with the deceased—   

Let Crossmolina and the Big House world   

Be damned to its own eternity, Lough Conn   

Forever signaled, never come upon,   

Lose itself, like the reason I came   

In the first place, and my aboriginal name.