UNITED KINGDOM

straittc@westminster.edu

The Saints of Cuchulain

1. A Brother

long before the streets of Boston
and the Irish district with its wailing
women before the busses coughing

black lung-
smoke and the red-haired children
drawing in charcoal on the walls of

buildings, there was Ireland—
It was always a broken country and

even now in the
apartment with cement floors and blown-
out windows he remembers how

it was green from end to end,
how the moors ran out ahead of him,

a flirtatious girl a bit too swift for his feet
and he left her and the churches contagious
war that spread a black blanket on the

green hills and scrub
and flew across the grey Atlantic void,

and now filled his day with work at the meat
factory at third and day street
alongside overblown Irish women

and in the evenings he would watch boys
fourteen and fifteen out of his window

kicking a leather ball in the street—
and there was charcoal pavement
instead of the black rocks of the moors
and the church here treats him well

even the conviction—

of the five-year old boy silenced
the emphatic screaming of the monsignor
last Sunday and made him turn clear

around in the pew to peer backward
at a hundred or so parishioners who didn’t

speak a lick of Irish the way it should be spoken
and it was two Sundays later that his brother
found him loping down the dark street to catch

a cab or two, and they paused in the middle
of the street froze still as the trees when

the wind stops and four streets later the question
came up—
Looks like the monsignors’ finally got the point?

2. Monsignor

we shall leave them alone as pale Irishmen
should be left to the pubs downtown

McNary’s I believe it is, and it’s where
they all go, take a streetcar and never
a bus and it’s a church to them the same

where we all drink the palebrown brew
in the evenings, those Saturday evenings
and that’s when I caught word of his brother

coming back from that place of the damned,
the contagious church—

where bits of torn sheet metal rain on the streets
where it’s too much to bear the family
where conviction comes up with the sun

and so it is better?

in the filth of the gutters here, the shattered glass
in the alleys from three floors up the brick building-
side and this was better where they called home

and the monsignor always saw them Sundays
never paid a mind at all when they walked

down the carpeted aisle and took a knee—
before our mother, walked out in the middle
of the sermon, past the boys fourteen and fifteen

in rags that looked like the streets themselves
had been rolled up around their shoulders

and yes the conviction—

we paid them no mind.

3. The Brothers

And shepherds we shall be, for thee my Lord for thee,
Power hath descended forth from thy hand,
that our feet may swiftly carry out thy command,
we shall flow a river forth to thee,
and teeming with souls shall it ever be.
In nomine patrie, et fili, et spiritu sancti.
~The McManus family prayer

a twisted knot of dead leaves and
the wall of snow from the sky-dam
broken above Boston held its breath until noon

grey men on the corners, the roots
of their shoes planted in the damn

dirty dust and the air is stale, unmoving
on Sunday afternoon as the dead oak
doors of the Church on third and main

swing open, precise, to push forth two men
both in coffeeblack jackets, brown boots

and grey shirts, both of whom take a bite
of the deep stale air from the filter of a cigarette
and they do it at the same time—

pause—

they stare, a pause
and the wind begins, moves its stiff arms

and legs, walks slow and exhales down
the street, the sidewalk, pardons traffic
signs for their stillness, breaks the silence

with the louder movement of trashpaper
and the music it makes around corners

now meets with nothing but emptiness—
no truth but a black jacket palewhite
circling brown eyes and

no justice but a black jacket palewhite circling
blue eyes—

and the long syllables of the wind
fill the morning full with
breath that lingers for an avenue, a cobblestone

square, a flag, anything to make it stretch and yawn
anything to taste its own blood

and the wind folds its hands tightly together, a murmur
that trails off around the parkbenches and cement statues
gushes of prayer as it vests its sword

a streetcar swings down the avenue
pushing dust into a dance on the stone-cracks

embraces itself around the two figures on the steps
pushes the smoke upward toward the concrete minarets,
and the wind spared their lives—

took only the dust from their jacket-shoulders
and they recline their heads upward, facing always upward

through the deadbrown leaves that swirl twenty feet above
past the stalness, and into a place so blue, so empty—
and the white jet trails push their way out over

the expanse, white fingers on a blue sheet hung
a thousand feet overhead, never wavering—

only giving way to the moon as the
sun pulls it up from behind the building on steel
cords, attached to nothing—

hand over hand, breath over breath, turning its
palm, facing it downward and the jet trails,

the jet trails are sworls, fingerprints of the sky
opened in two blue hands over Boston—

4. Ironclad Lads

where he came from is a mystery
but every Sunday he sat in the third
pew, halfway down at right angles

with the monsignor that Sunday he spoke—
lifted his little voice to the rafters in the calm

and still light making its way in a thousand colors
through the third and fourth ovular stained-glass
windows that bordered the contagious church

and threw a blanket of light in the fringes
of the oak pews over the dozen men a women

and the little boy who always sat where he sat
and the tiny voice mingled with the light
silenced the screaming of the monsignor,

left him gripping the pulpit in a fit of dizziness
at what the boy was saying—

he was covered in grey rags from head to foot, his hair
coarse black like the coal that was dumped into
every house on the square, his eyes sunk deep

into his thin face, two blue spheres about a landscape
of black iris that quivered as he spoke

spoke of conviction—

and the silence was thick over the congregation
a black sheet on a rainy warm Sunday morning.

5. Across the Street

they stand, smoke, and talk of the message,
of the emphatic screamings and wailings
of the parishioners, standing in the bright

Sundaylight on the cement sidewalk
and it comes without speech, comes like a rush

across the street as the white car disappears
in a flash of red-orange and hot air—

and put a point to the Monsignor, enveloped
the congregation, ignorant, unknowing
and like an Irish nightmare they were home

it was the same heat, the same fire as on the Dublin
street and God had touched the street with a golden

finger, reached through the sunlight and covered
the street, covered the street in a white heat
and they never blinked—

where was justice?
across the city, or in a dumpster in the blackened park?

where was justice?

palewhite irises that contract at the first sign of heat
narrow in depth and perception, bring the mind
to the surface, expose the imagination to the skin

redden a rash that makes the whole city itch
for an avenue, an escape, and the wind could never

be without a measure of luck, without something
to push around, without dust to play with
and dirty its fingers—

and they turn their faces from the blast, from the smell
of burning gasoline and rotten rubber, take a step,
the scrape of two left shoes in grit on the ground

and walk without purpose, with no one to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car.

© All Copyright, Timothy Straite.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.