The Phoenix Park

by

Hay Machine

(for Paddy and Cissie)

Great estate of the Knights Templars
heart-shaped heart of Dublin
opening up rising from Guinness' brewery
into a promising land
the cultivated spiral of the railed People's Gardens
willow-filled lake walks made for handholding
and for softening Sundays

Across the Wellington memorial
soaring angular granite tower
celebrating Dublin's own disowned
and Victoria's Zoo illogical gardens
fucking tigers and lions and monkeys in Dublin
and all its native exotica crying out for nuts and attention

The depot Lord save us
Dublin's own metropolitan finest
and the back entrance to McKee's last bastion
the plans for an Indian outpost sent to Dublin by a mistake
India's loss is Ireland's opportunity
burn everything English except their money

Oh fill me with a sense of great occasion
that bastard Tim Healy's Vice Regal Lodge
when Dev boasted that he knew the priests
Parnell's persecutor asked him swiftly if he knew the bishops
made for Hazel Lavery when she was acting-Vicerene
and the smell of the hops sweetening the air as far west as the twin oaks

Henry with the insatiable wifely appetite
took the lands suppressing the Hospitallers he though they were monks
the grass was let grow until Chesterfield came as Viceroy to George II
and he opened the park around the Eagle Monument
unable to fathom the Irish Fionn-uisce
unable to fathom the Irish more likely

The cricket grounds and dog-pond opening out under the trees to the fifteen acres
great expanse of African proportions
where milkmen and van drivers with African manners
still play old-fashioned football on Sunday mornings (far post)
the straight road dissecting the prairies over to the Chapelizod wall
and the polo grounds where old decency still can have an outing

The Furry Glen immortalised and ballad-sung as place of great amorous conquest
more sung-of than sinned-in the truth be known
and the Magazine Fort filled to the gunnels with ammo
Jazus if only the lads could have scaled its five-foot parapets
but wishful thinking knows no bounds
whereas the ordinance survey does important and vital work

The wooden schoolhouse over by the hole in the wall built in Dickens' time
His Holiness' own envoy would still be installed were it not for the dry rot
and the special relationship between two great nations America and Erin's pride
enshrined behind that white arch and grand drive
the gas lights the deer herd the great gates at Ashdown Castleknock Porterstown
Chapelizod Islandbridge Parkgate Street and Blackhorse Avenue

Out my mother's window
when she lay with sisters free
the future hid behind the trees
no thought of you nor me
my father cycling through the park
was bound to come to hear
awaiting him a lady lay
the rest is history

There was a time
when children roamed
and loved this grassy place
climbed the trees
and chewed the stems
to eat it by degrees
there was a time
this place was every single hopeful thing
a haven place
of water clear
a God-inspiring spring

NEXT?
Why don't you look at Not My Body
by: John William McGrath III
from: Mesa, AZ, US

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