Six Poems

Poetry ~ Daniel Wade 
​

The Translator
 
Don’t trust the calm reigning over tonight; 
your language cannot be written
 
in ink, carvings or braille, and you’re
one of the last left alive to speak it fluently.
 
Your langauge is a beach without stones, 
an ocean without lighthouses, a subway
 
burrowing through its concrete tunnel
like a steel anaconda, its windowed
 
belly filled with straphangers 
headed for anywhere and nowhere.
 
And I know it only when you speak it,
your voice a sizzling tonic in my ear.


Self-Quarantine
 
Unable to ignore the noise of my neighbours 
Spraying their hands with disinfectant and castile:
The world carries on, behind closed doors.
 
Taking it day by day with slow depletion of stores 
I get all my news online, my weekly shop as well,
Unable to ignore the noise of my neighbours
 
Who stand far apart, for the sake of each other’s 
Health; fine by me, I don’t much like people.
The world carries on, behind closed doors.
 
I make the most of my self-imposed shelters 
Like a phoenix brushing off the last ash-speckle,
Unable to ignore the noise of my neighbours,
 
Even with Season 3 streamed, virtual tours 
Of the Met and Louvre earmarked for appraisal.
The world carries on, behind closed doors.
 
Today, the sun bubbles white, its molten
glamours Lost on me, who caches dust like a pearl
As the world carries on behind closed doors, 
Unable to ignore the noise of my neighbours.

Ghazal: Small Hours
 
Last night we DM’d each other well into the small hours:
an unplanned ritual we’ve come to share only in the small hours.
 
I wouldn’t call it flirting, more a soothing back-and-
forth motored by its own shy rhythm in the small hours
 
between two people, becalmed at their nightly berth;
funny how inhibitions melt away with the small hours.
 
It’s not like I’m forward enough to move things between
us any further than polite banter in the small hours
 
but still, it’s good to chat and surrender our few lean
secrets, exhume our thoughts with the small hours,
 
fuel each other’s insomnia (though sleep is a priority
for us both), and hope to achieve, with the small hours
 
over Messenger, some savoury semblance of intimacy.
I’m alone with you as I’m alone in the small hours
 
telling myself, this is enough. This is the closest 
I’ll allow you to get during the small hours.
 
But if you were here, holding me holding you,
would our chemistry be the same, as in the small hours?

Blow-in Crew
 
There were broken pallets stacked up
in the warehouse yard, round the back 
of M. O’ Byrne Hire base, in Inchicore.
 
Good for fuck-all now. Except for making
firewood, maybe. The day before, 
in Phoenix Park, we loaded them onto the lorry
as the sun leathered our brows
 
to red creases. We winced from the grip 
and strain of muscle against the weight
as we lugged centre folding tables 

from backroom to twistlock. 
The ratchet strap buckle clicked
as we lashed them to the scuffed floor.
 
All around us, marquee tents were dismantled 
and tail-lights flashed as if in alarm
as lorries backed up. A flatbed trolley waited 
to be stacked with amp cases and monitors
and wheeled onto the tail-lift.
 
I stuffed my work gloves 
in my arse pocket as my wrists tanned.
It was mundane work,
but the cash was always in hand.
 
A small crew, we were:
 
Maynard, who did these jobs when he wasn’t
slapping out jazzy basslines in the Inter 

Tuan with his Germanic precision 

Chris with arms thick as mooring lines
 
Tristan who whistled Breton folk-songs as he worked
 
Cutter jangling his keys as the lorry backed up
 
Paul thé Prepper, who said that he told the fella 
who built his flatbeds to make them,
and I quote: “basically apocalypse-proof.”
 
Maynard drove us back into town
at quitting time 
and we laughed at his Tom Waits impression.
It was a long day 
and worth it for the cash in hand.
 
I asked myself afterwards,
would you rather be doing this, 
sweat seeping through your t-shirt
and your tendons bristling, 
the feeling of quitting time
and the extra few bob in your pocket, 
than scratching your balls in some overheated office,
shooting emails back and forth?
 
Just another member of the blow-in crew?


Ghazal for Zaira Taranum
 
The smell of smoke lingers all night 
and by morning, there’s a chokehold of soot.
 
Tomorrow isn’t a guarantee for anyone;
each redacted name remains legible in the soot.
 
The flames’ sour gold, visible to anyone 
and everyone, melts by the hour down to soot.
 
Missiles dive in polished metallic harmony,
snuffing air before they hit, belching out soot.
 
What whiff of blood now needles your nose, 
as you army-crawl through crimson turf and soot?
 
Corpses are identified only by the rings they wear,
keepsakes of fealty, nearly lost to the soot.
 
The smell of smoke gives you away, guarantee 
of tomorrow reserved for no-one, keepsake of soot.


Easter Week
          More than 700 former Army personnel have stayed in residential homes provided by a support
            organisation over the last 12 years. 
            - Irish Times, June 28th, 2017.
 
Then: he grabs his rifle, levels it, tries 
To ignore the screams; putrescine
Or cadaverine sting his nose as tracer- 
Fire scorches the sky, a flock
Of bullets in slick flight, today’s ashes 
Shipped home to Ireland, shrapnel
And limbs, heli rotors whisking Congolese 
Wind to gale-force, sand-drifts salting
His throat, leftover musk of battle.
 
Now: bare-knuckled in April, out 
On his arse and limping down the quays,
He vomits smokeless shell casings 
Over a stone wall, grains of flint lodged
In his septuagenarian eye. 
Rain pounds the tarmac like rubble
And the Liffey’s back on night patrol, 
Husks of acid pooling in splotches
Of green, white, orange. Lying huddled
 
As he once lay huddled at many a Lebanese 
Gully stricken by roadside bombs
In the glare of a shop window display, 
The sleeping bag he takes cover in
Is a winding sheet, his mind a blueprint 
Blotched with the bidding of nations.
Blood blends hotly with rain; he lurks 
Across the way from the veteran’s hostel
In Smithfield, unable to bring himself
 
To walk in. This is what he’s come home 
To instead: Lariam soaking his bloodstream,
The moon’s searchlight glimmer, his bones 
Clinking beneath taut layers of flesh
As he re-fights his nightly battle with the cold 
Slashing through the cardboard mattress
He salvaged from a wheelie bin, each 
Shiver a jab from the finger of death
To jolt him awake. A man of disappearances,
 
Named after Emmet or Wolfe Tone 
Or whoever was Taoiseach
The year he was born, 
He now walks like he’s being watched,
Like he’s on holy ground scorched 
Coal-black by grenade blasts
And not vast enough to harbour 
The dead: let him and all else
Find their outpost; see that it lasts.
​

Daniel Wade is a poet and playwright from Dublin, Ireland. In January 2017, his play The Collector opened the 20th anniversary season of the New Theatre, Dublin. In January 2020 his radio drama Crossing the Red Line was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 Extra. He is also the author of the e-chapbook Iceberg Relief, published by Underground Voices. Daniel was the Hennessy New Irish Writing winner for April 2015 in The Irish Times, and his poetry and short fiction have appeared in over two dozen publications since 2012. http://www.danielwade.ie/

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