When I was in Ireland back in May/June, I stayed a night in the city of Limerick. I have an elderly aunt who has lived there for probably 60 years or more. When I was a child, we made an almost annual summer school holiday trip from London to Kerry, and would pass through Limerick, sometimes staying overnight. My aunt and her family lived in a small flat in a Georgian terrace in the centre of Limerick, in Thomas Street. Opposite was a pig abattoir.
This time back, the pig abattoir was gone, but there is a pub in Thomas Street now, called “The Blind Pig”. My aunt now lives about a kilometre out of the city.
I visited and read at the monthly “On the Nail” poetry group at The Barge in Limerick. The Limerick Writers Centre was launching edition 26 of it quarterly literary journal “Revival”; a lovely group of people, and I was impressed overall with how much Limerick has changed from the days when it used to be called “Knife City”. Mind you, on my way back from “On the Nail”, there was a punch up in O’Connell Street involving both men and women.
“Revival” publishes poetry from all over the world, not just Ireland. So I was very pleased today to receive in the post edition 27 of “Revival”. It includes my poem “Complicity”, about my memory of my aunt’s small Thomas Street flat. Here it is:
Complicity
Looking over Limerick
from my aunt’s
third floor flat
the first sight
across Thomas Street
is O’Mara’s bacon factory.
My stomach heaves
a blood stench
foul faeces reek.
Shrill pig terror
distresses my senses
assaults my ears.
Warm summer evenings
she opens all the windows
onto the street.
My dreams are of
pink bristled carcasses
hanging from hooks
twisting in mid air
life ebbing onto sawdust,
sluicing from slit throats.
This morning she
places before me
eggs and rashers
forbids me to leave
the table until
my plate is clean.
I cannot defy her.
Flensing the rind
from the fat
stabbing a sliver
of fried flesh into
the exposed yolk
I savour
the coral coloured
yellow daubed meat.
After breakfast
I am drawn
to the scene of
doomed animals
disgorged from
the bowels of trucks
wide staring
eyes damning me
for complicity.
—
copyright Mike Hopkins 2013
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