I am not sure what it was-
A calling, a desire, a need
To start afresh; reborn-
Washed down to white,
A bare canvas to be painted on,
Once more, without mark or tint
Of what had been or came before
And yet, in this new rendering,
Each selected stroke
And technique of life and love
That had gone before
Shone out as if I’d laid
One too few undercoats
To cover up the replication
Of the previous interpretation.
But they were merely tones-
Hints of what had led me here,
To this city as old as time,
That so reveled in its own past
That it proved impossible
For anyone or anything to look
Directly in front of them
Without being aware of all
That lay in its shadowed history;
The heartless father- no longer
As ice stone in the memory,
Melting slightly with every sunset
Witnessed by the Pont des Arts.
How you tortured us,
I once thought, and yet,
With distance to enlighten me,
I see it was you who was tortured
By your own fumbling hands,
Unable to hold on to what you had,
But fighting to make it bleed as it fell
From your frightened clutch.
I’d cast you in my child-thinking mind
As impenetrable rock, and yet,
You were no more than base-empty,
Fool-hearted, stubborn image
Of lost boy, plunking manly grunts
Onto foolish quarrels that festered
Within you, as we pulled away,
Long before your slow path
To fated finish line- the end.
A line that I no longer saw
From the sanctuary of my own
Tiny life, all carved out
In new directions, opposite
To all of yours until my feet rested
On that fine day, in summer,
On the ground under which
I hoped you lay at peace, at last.
And so I turned from you,
With a nod of final forgiveness
To our past and flew back
To my future where firm footing
Claimed my title as accepted dweller
Instead of foreigner within.
I became an inhabitant
In my own right and a witness
To this city that stretched out
Before me as each new dawn
Rose to tempt me
With further offerings before
Wrapping itself around me
Once more as the sun set
On those journeys home-
Always bank side and lamp lit-
When this once walled city
Leant in and shielded me
From the loneliness of that run
From home; the free-falling flight
Of the frenzied Irishman to France.
Was youth my only excuse
For the naivety and lack
Of processions I’d arrived with;
A wallet not so bulging, a tongue
That had barely tickled the language
And a boy without a home,
Or friend or job to do?
And yet that was the desire
That bought me that once-off,
One-way, discounted, newspaper
Cut-out, couponed ticket.
My greatest folly and yet,
So too, my greatest joy.
My canvas may not have been
As blank as I thought but,
By the end, it had been
Uncompromisingly retouched,
The edges softened, the frame
Selected and, in my own reflection,
I saw colors I had never before
Imagined to be a part of me.
Damien B. Donnelly 