Jacket 18 - Fred Johnston: Two poems

The One

He’s taken for a novelty now,
But he wasn’t always —
Back in the bad days
He ran the place. His word
Was our law. And no harm, either:
The soft welter of him now, you’d
Think he’d never
Been a clever
Man, but he was. He can’t sing
Now, but he could, back then.
Only the young can mock like that,
Urging him on
And his voice gone
He’s a fool to himself, feeling
The young girls’ slim backs
And thinking what was naughty
Forty years ago is naughty now —
I am his son,
I am the one
Who waits while he pisses himself:
I am the one who carries this old Christ
Up the hill to his bed of skulls —
I am the one who rolls the stone over his grave.

To a Country Journalist

(for Una)

There can only be so many small importances,
Or street gods giving bounty from neon thrones —
There is an end to soft politenesses on ’phones.

A time comes when the nib defies the distances
From margin to margin and goes mad on truth
Like a child re-finding language and its worth.

The careful windows stare down at instances
Of ordinary news, the small things making sin —
Go where things and sin are greater, and begin.

Fred Johnston was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1951. He has published two novels, a collection of poems, eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Being Anywhere — New & Selected Poems. In 1986 he founded Galway’s annual literature festival.