The Communards
Louise Michel, 1830-1905

Overnight, the butcher-generals of the emperor
lined up in service to the state, without ever
having shifted from their view. They revelled coldly
in the killing of the Communards: the street-
redeeming women as they carried off the guillotine
for fuel, the youthful, hungry medicals who bore
the massacred and wounded through the smoke.
In the name of peace, they cannon-balled my people
where they stood, the capital a chopping-block.
History forgets the dead, forever yearning onwards,
but the voices linger after in the air. I still recall
the rebels, singing as they died. The world
is what belongs to all; can no more be divided
than the light. To bring me to repentance for my sins,
Versailles up-packed and ported me away,
on the Virginie, a stately ship that sweltered
like a cage. For months, my fellow inmates
witnessed nothing but the sky, the dark,
impassive ocean swell, with now and then
a distant sail, a flickering of white, on the trembling
horizon. Sometimes a rain of luminescent stars
made constellations in the waves; I wondered
at the brightness of the black. By day, we watched
the albatrosses, elegant and gentle, circling the ship.
The keener sailors liked to bait these poor,
majestic birds. When snared, the calloused hands
would hook them by the beak, and hang them
writhing quietly in pain, their wide, black-
lidded eyes expanding, agonised, till death.
Kinder modes of murder were deferred, for fear
the pricely whiteness of the feathers
would be stained: a parable of modern man.
I could have wept, to see such brilliant creatures
soaring overhead. I feel it once again, as if
repeated in a dream. The prisoners were silent.
We kept the flag of pity, furled around our hearts.

** 

The Seven Years’ War

In thirsting Bay, Bakool and Banadir
last year, at least four dozen, maybe more,

of the dislocated population
died for every day gone by, in crisis

and malaise – a fever-ridden region
cursed

to weather seven fallow seasons,
petitioning for rain,

in a brassy, broken polity,
ravenous for grain:

the smoking, far-away foray
of bellicose White Russia

on weltering Ukraine
has twisted to a trickle

all shipments to the Horn,
sowing hunger

in the bellies
of Somalis in the sun,

and nourishing migration,
cadaverous and glum.

Observers of the conflict
have witnessed every sin.

Among the excess deaths
forecasted

in the summer still to come,
half are famine-children,

withering and young,
and all

have grown accustomed
to living on the run.

 **

The Mission

By morning, all the men were stripped
and barricaded in the dust, their brittle

bodies bent
beneath the guns; the girls and women

cowed inside a cell. With work to do,
the feral, grim commandos

carried on, burning out the buildings,
two by two, and sprayed

the wasted balconies
with lead. Threatening

to shoot her children, niece,
and cousins for deceit,

the moving unit chopped
Naifa from the rest, leaving

her to flounder in her bed –
a drifting great-grandmother

on a limb, incapable
of memory

or unassisted speech. When
the carnival of carnage

passed, an interlude
of weeks, her daughter

re-attempted
to navigate the street,

clambering the stairwell
with dilapidated feet.

Cornered in the rubble,
fragmented, in a coil,

she discovered the cadaver,
all a mess – and gathered up

the residue
in a tatter-hearted shawl,

an ossifying bundle,
for human burial.

Decimated bullets
were strewn along the hall.

  **

The Prophet

God made him from the dust. And murmured
to the dust, Become. And he became –

whose mother, Mariam, before, had lumbered
from her people in the night, beyond the dawn,

and lain herself, footsore, beneath
a parachute of palms, hidden from rebuke.

Then pushed in panic, bleeding,
through the butcheries of birth, to bring

her brittle baby from the womb – a burning boy,
hot with all the history of men. Her limp

and bloody body suckled him, and sank,
resting in the nourishment of shade. His name

was later blessed among the fishermen and poor.
They pardoned her, and listened as he grew.

He moved as in a forest, quietly attentive,
divvying the given word like morsels of a loaf.

From potter’s clay – he said – my hands
will mould the likeness of a bird,

my breath will breathe the beat of life
into the body. The bird of mud

will startle in the grip, begun to fly.
Your broken eyes will wonder

at the humming of the clay, a thing
of thrumming senses – living bird

up-lifted in the soaring of the sun.
The blind despised, the sick at heart,

the woman buried brutally by rocks,
so, too, my hands will heal. My blood

shall ease the grievings of the dead.
I swear it, by the drifting light that wings

the dark, and journeys ever onwards,
by the fog of stars that darkens, too,

and the early mist of brightness on the waves,
I swear: everything you’ve heard is true.

With a rough and tender reaching, witness.
In the risen haze of morning, see.

The way is leanly winding – and assured.
The voice that grew within him was the melody of God.

 ** 

Sleep Songs
For Aisling

The light
we wrap you in,
the rapid, running days,
the wave we hear as murmurs

after rain, a curtain-dream
of endlessness, and ease,
the gullet-cry, the falling sky
you don’t yet know, but

somehow fills
your every window,
cerulean and grey – all these
belong to wizened spring,

a time, the wiser poets say,
of quickening, and gifts:
your season, little Aisling,
in a wood-sung crib.
………………… ~

Older, wary-headed, harsh,
long ago we learned

the prowling earth is ravenous
and tough, no friend

to tender children,
who dawn

to dark, in every span,
must flee

the burning bomb
and bullet-wind,

the unrelenting
strategems

ungentle men have mastered
out of pain: a fear

that daily fills our bones,
would gnaw

the very light away,
were you

not also here, starling,
a ripple round our hearts.

What joy – to watch
you dream, adrift,

your ruminative fingers
cupped below your chin.

………………… ~

The hungry sun, the midnight milk,
the humming ocean-hours,

how these
new urgencies concern you,
hurried heart – oh pebble-weight,

burbling intently,
snug between my arms.

………………… ~ 

Uncertain what to say
or sing, clumped
in webs of carried meaning,

faltering for words, instead
we bring intricate things
to proffer and bestow:

the apple-hearted hat
you wear, a floral
ribbon-bow and coat,

nine windy daffodils
at noon, the moon
beyond the glass,

our own
rough hands that hold you,
learning deftness from the feat,

and a furling trail
of wishes, whispered
while you sleep.

 —————————— 

Ciarán O’Rourke is a poet from Dublin. His second collection, Phantom Gang, was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2023. His third collection is forthcoming from The Irish Pages Press.