Kelvin Corcoran
RUE DES HIBOUX
1
To write a mythology
commensurate to an ignorant island
is not difficult.
They were of that class of traitor
self-serving, unimaginative.
Their only skill
to make the poor vote for poverty
the preterite for abandonment.
Oh bury me quietly
in Hardy’s field.
*
I perch my head in a bare room
on Rue des Hiboux, dogs bark in French
Ash and Silver Birch talk all night.
Reynard at the rubbish
on the tree-darkened road
Europe at the corner.
His delicate step and nose in filth
by comparison is noble
and not given to self-destruction.
*
– What in the shape of a cloud?
A cloud in the shape of a cloud
in the shape of an imagined country
adrift on the edge of a continent.
– Doubtful, we’ve moved on from that,
since meteorology usurped portents.
It disintegrates anyway, thin as air
snagged on a fault mid-Atlantic.
I like the high ones up there,
silver white capsules full of people
sun under their wings gliding the trade routes
rising to the world, the many.
2
To drill a hole in this wall is hard,
you’ll need an extra-long bit to get through the granite
but then, task accomplished, you can pack in the charge
play the fool and bring the house down.
As if I might say – Jerusalem is fallen, lie down and weep;
a blunt truth, as if you might hear high-toned counterpoint
spinning in the eaves a social contract of forgotten triumph
turned to spite and Albion absurd.
3
Ironies are everywhere like roadworks on the pavement
and although I might not find the Supermarché,
my short-term memory shot, my sense of direction set at zero,
is as nothing compared to that country called England.
There the fields sing no more, the road taken buried in connivance
and time runs backwards to an empire of amnesia.
What is the name for this shade of green where the holloway leads,
where they travelled to follow the trade of their day.?
Yes – the high ones up there zip zip like silver bullets,
there is a silver bullet and there are flightpaths above us,
they form and evaporate as we pass, there is a silver bullet,
the ones I like over the cities of Europe light the sky.
Copyright © Kelvin Corcoran 2017
Kelvin Corcoran’s most recent book is Sea Table (Shearsman 2015). His next book, Facing West,
will be published in March 2017. A contributor to the original Molly Bloom magazine in 1980, he has also appeared in online editions 1 and 5 0 and, in collaboration with Alan Halsey, in Molly Bloom 10. Further details of publications and other projects can be found at shearsman.com. The first part of ‘Rue des Hiboux’ was originally published in Stride
magazine by Rupert Loydell.
will be published in March 2017. A contributor to the original Molly Bloom magazine in 1980, he has also appeared in online editions 1 and 5 0 and, in collaboration with Alan Halsey, in Molly Bloom 10. Further details of publications and other projects can be found at shearsman.com. The first part of ‘Rue des Hiboux’ was originally published in Stride
magazine by Rupert Loydell.