Middle Dormitory
The unpurged images of day recede.
We’re all abed, a ghost train going nowhere.
A boy jerks up and moans, dream-violated.
The flashlight of the duty prefect’s torch
drains blood from every face it hits;
I hear
a sleeper’s unhinged chuckle; feral snores.
I start to drift … before me float four shades
who tilt a bed up ninety odd degrees –
a boy-cum-mattress crumples to the floor
his piggy grunts converging to a cry
I panic-pray dear god, not me, please, please
an agony of trance … I sense them pass me by
returning to the dark from which they’ve crept
the corner of your sleep that’s never slept.
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 116:
A WB Yeats Special Issue
This essential Yeats anniversary publication is edited by Vona Groarke and includes responses to Yeats’s legacy and readings of his poems from public figures as diverse as Bill Whelan, Neil Jordan, Colm Tóibín, Frank McGuinness, Mary Costello and John Banville, along with new poems responding to Yeats’s work by Irish and international poets such as Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds, Philip Schultz, Sinéad Morrissey and Harry Clifton. The issue also includes Yeats’s poetry collections, reviewed by leading poets as if just published. Now also available in hardback.
"superb special edition" John Boland, Irish Independent
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