Patroness of the Lock Hospital, Townsend Street, Dublin
She had become, the preacher hollows his voice,
A name not to be spoken, the answer
To the witty man’s loose riddle, what’s she
That’s neither maiden, widow nor wife?
A pause opens its jaws
In the annual panegyric,
The word whore prowling silent
Up and down the long aisle.
Under the flourishing canopy
Where trios of angels mime the last trombone,
Behind the silver commas of the shrine,
In the mine of the altar her teeth listen and smile.
She is still here, she refuses
To be consumed. The weight of her bones
Burns down through the mountain.
Her death did not make her like this;
Her eyes were hollowed
By the bloody scene: the wounds
In the body of her child’s father
Tumbled in a ditch. The door was locked,
The names flew and multiplied; she turned
Her back but the names clustered and hung
Out of her shoulderbones
Like children swinging from a father’s arm,
Their tucked-up feet skimming over the ground.