A World After Proverbs
Where there is plenty, take plenty;
Where there is little, take it all.
– Irish proverb
When the hour drew Motholoch to Rathlin,
breasting the signal from Marconi’s ribs
in Ballycastle, she rode the Sea’s Swallow
on a dulse raft flanked by compass jellyfish.
They folded in the surf like tricolours
while she beached at the limbus of the moon
by logs furred with geese hungry to be born.
When she peeled the turf back from the mass-rock
it spoke to her of axe-makers and trade,
how oats and salt bought a corpse’s gold teeth
or the silk taken from corpses, of fish
poisoned for the stories of three gold teeth.
‘The oceans are poisoned now for nothing’,
she answered, ‘The tooth-standard is still in force.’
When the Virgin folded in Rathlin surf
like a jellyfish, it gave the first sign.
From McFarland’s abominable marriage
she took the next. Until the last seal breaks
Motholoch hunkers in the skulls of cars,
scraping the bald patch on her fur with shells
which gossip of a world after proverbs.
*Ian Duhig has written six books of poetry, most recently Pandorama (Picador 2010) and is currently preparing his seventh with the working title Ashtrayland. Read more about him at The Poetry Archive.
A version of this poem appeared in the long out of print ‘The Bradford Count’