By Way of Conversation

[Jimmy O'Connell]

By Way of Conversation

It’s like what you’d hear by way of conversation
in a bar listening to a stranger tell how he,
too young for such responsibility, brought home
the coffin of his dead uncle. You imagine

him there sitting in Crewe station, rain, maybe,
slanting by a single yellow street light, waiting
for the mailboat train. And you awe at how
he ended up signing docket after

carbon copy docket, the ticket lady
grimly nodding: Yes, she too had duties
such as this to bear in a universe
turned echoey strange and tumbling through lost.

And you’d imagine him wearing the loan of his
father’s woolen greatcoat in grey, fog-damp, morning
Dun Laoghaire, the mailboat just departing again,
seagulls swing and swoop, acolytes sent by glowering

death, to remind him and you that we are too young
for such responsibilities, no matter how
old we are. The coffin, silent freight,
echoes under the eaves a dumb

requiem into the screech
absorbing
fog.

[mat james]

...she too had duties
such as this to bear in a universe
turned echoey strange and tumbling through lost.

I love these lines of yours, Jimmy!

Your poem brings me to reflect on the mood of T.S.Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; T.S.Eliot

Nice work Jimmy.

[Jimmy O'Connell]

Thank you, Mat. Illustrious company there in TS Eliot!!! I've always loved his stuff... especially Prufrock... since school days... school daze...

Jimmy