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Best Poems Written by Alan Ireland

Below are the all-time best Alan Ireland poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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St Cuthbert

On Lindisfarne, they say, 
St Cuthbert took a hooded crow, 
A jackdaw and a jay, 
And on their strident tongues bestowed

The gift of harmony.
No more did ugly croaks and caws
Dispute above the sea, 
Or trouble those sequestered shores.

They sang all day, those three; 
And as they drew their corvine kin, 
The devil wept to see
His shrinking nursery of sin.

Details | Alan Ireland Poem

New Zealand

The dark, drenched forest
was tinkling with tuis and bellbirds,
blind to the ledger book,
the bill of lading,
the glint in the eye of the ax.

Pious settlers wired the land for religion
and switched on the lights.
The natives were dazzled,
but loved the portly man in the red suit
who gave them everything they wanted.

On the Historical Society outing,
we struggle for footholds
in whirlpools of organized ennui,
clutch at the slack rope
that cordons off irrelevant ancestries.

‘The end is not nigh,’
the Dom-Post tells its readers.
Doors are bolted against the wind,
the tick, tick of the electric fence
around eroded pastures.

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The Magpie

Of all the birds, both foul and fair, 
You stubbornly refused to wear

Full mourning at the Crucifixion, 
And were cursed with this affliction: 

Piebald broods of raucous young, 
The devil's laugh on every tongue.

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Expulsion

A black cloud 
rains selectively 
on the dispossessed, 
a wretched lot. 
 
My billowing abaya 
now clings to me, 
revealing my form. 
Their glances lacerate. 
 
The road stretches 
to the horizon, 
but has swallowed 
my expectations.


Palestine, 1948

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Cut-Price Poetry

Why am I drawn
to this scowling girl
selling her poems
in a Shinjuku underpass?

Every Tuesday she is here,
next to a Nikon ad,
threatening commuters
with her cyclostyled angst.

Busy people keep up
with the times,
do a tap dance
on their smartphones.

Only drunks buy poetry.
Grubbing for their last,
sweaty coins, they
mock her with every purchase.

Details | Alan Ireland Poem

The Elder

In the shadow of this tree, 
Judas mapped his misery, 

But saw no finger-post, save one: 
A beckoning oblivion.

So up he climbed, with labored breath, 
To where he could devise his death.

The twisted tree, by time distressed, 
Would ratify his wretchedness, 

And let him fall — his loss complete, 
The seamless sky his winding sheet.

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The Robin

When our Savior cried in pain, 
There came to him a bird so plain

It touched his heart to see it try
To ease his fearful agony.

Upon the cross, he could not move, 
Nor make a sign to show his love, 

But honored it with this bequest: 
A splash of blood upon its breast.

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Kismet

The wind arrives 
with sleeves rolled up. 
All day it stirs 
the cauldron of the sky. 
 
As thunder boils, 
the clouds explode. 
Each raindrop falls 
to its appointed place.

Details | Alan Ireland Poem

Visitation

After work,
drinking in a matchbox bar in Shimbashi,
waiting for a sign...

The noren twitches.
A hand appears between the flaps.
An eye assesses the interior,

and is gone.

Details | Alan Ireland Poem

Writing a Poem

A single stroke 
dispatches emptiness, 
in one ambitious line 
gives backbone to 
my limp attention. 
 
Rigid fingers tighten 
on the brush. 
The bristles slash again 
and incorruptible reality 
is neatly tailored 
to my artifice. 
 
Leaning on my arm, 
I glance behind me 
at the letters 
inching down the page. 
There's no return, 
no second chance. 
 
The brush no longer 
mediates between 
intention and accomplishment. 
It races on ahead of me, 
guided by the incidental 
pattern of its progress. 
 
Independent of endeavor, 
indifferent to what I am 
or what I hoped to be, 
it brushes my design aside 
and draws its own conclusions.